UK Public M&A: The Month in a Minute (October 2026)

Client Alert | November 9, 2026

Did Halloween spook away the bidders? Not so. You wait ages for a bid, then a National Express and the ghost of an Eddie Stobart turn up at once.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Budget month saw more breathing space for transactions with only two firm offers and two possible offers in October
Gamma Communications got spooked and temporarily adjourned its shareholder scheme meeting
Brave Bison’s trick-or-treat hostile cash and share offer for System1 Group reached 41% and lapsed

(-50% vs. October 2025)

Firm Offers Announced

40.86%

(+3.46% vs. 2025)

Avg. Bid Premium

£800M

(-£3.39B vs. September 2026)

Total Deal Value

£654.5M

(-£248 million vs. September 2026)

Median Deal Size

Ashtead Technology Holdings

Deal Size: £500M

Bidders: Ember Infrastructure Management

Ember Infrastructure Management had clearly done deep-dive diligence and not found any skeletons in the locker of subsea technology specialist Ashtead Technology Holdings. Ember Infrastructure announcing a recommended £505 million cash offer on 21 October.

Mobico Group

Deal Size: £308M

Bidders: Autobus de Leon

It is buses, not broomsticks, in Autobus de Leon’s (CMC Group and Asterion Industrial) £308 million recommended cash offer for National Express operator Mobico Group, which was announced on 30 October.

Logistics Development Group

Deal Size: £82M

Bidders: DBAY Advisers

DBAY Advisers, manager and 27% shareholder of Logistics Development Group, has stirred the cauldron. LDG (formerly Eddie Stobart Logistics, a business it has since exited) announced on 8 October that it had received an £82 million indicative cash approach from DBAY, which it had rejected. DBAY now has a PUSU deadline of 5 November.

First Tin plc

Deal Size: £81M

Bidders: Metals X Limited

On 9 October, First Tin (which, as it says on the tin, is, er, a tin-focussed developer) announced it had received an £81 million indicative cash approach from its major (29.95%) shareholder, ASX listed Metals X Limited. First Tin is considering the proposal and Metals X has a PUSU deadline of 6 November.

OCTOBER AT A GLANCE

Offers Announced: A quiet October, with just 2 firm and 2 possible offers. The 4 new offers are the lowest monthly total since at least January 2024, and firm offers are down a third on October 2025.

As at 01 November 2026

Offers by Sector (YTD): Oil, gas and chemicals moves clear at the top with 8, ahead of financial and technology on 7 each, while real estate climbs to 5.

As at 01 November 2026

Bid Premia

As at 01 November 2026.

Financial Advisor Fees (% deal value)

As at 01 November 2026.

Public M&A

WHAT’S HAPPENED: October 2026

No Mystery Bus Tour

Mobico Group plc (formerly National Express Group plc) is no stranger to the takeover arena. It most recently losing out to German Infrastructure fund DWS Group in 2022 in a contested battle for Stagecoach Group plc. Similarly, it is not the Spanish Cosman family’s first foray, or even the first time they have knocked on National Express’s door, having previously made a £765 million indicative offer in July 2009 as part of a consortium with CVC Capital Partners. That approach was ultimately timed out by the PUSU deadline.

Patience is a virtue and, 17 years later, the bus has come round again, with Spanish operator Autobus de Leon, S.L. (which is jointly owned 50.1% by CMC Group (the family office of the Cosman family) and 49.9% by Asterion Industrial) announcing a £308 million recommended cash offer for Mobico on 29 October.

This is no mystery bus tour. Mobico is well-known to the CMC Group/Cosman family, not just as a result of the previous takeover approach. The CMC Group has been a shareholder since 2005 and held approximately 18% at the time of the 2009 approach. It subsequently increased its stake to 26%. Jorge Cosman is also deputy chair of Mobico.

While the headline offer price is less than half the 2009 proposal, Mobico’s debt is not (despite streamlining operations through recent asset sales), with the current proposal representing an implied enterprise value of £2.3 billion and Mobico’s share price of 29.7 pence immediately prior to the offer period being a fraction of the high of 469 pence immediately prior to the COVID pandemic. Autobus de Leon believes it can support Mobico’s business as part of a larger pan-European platform. The question is, do shareholders want a ticket to ride?

Driving Instructions: First – Reverse – Brake (Fee of 2026)

Two teams who presumably did not take a breath in October were FTSE 250 potential merger partners RHI Magnesita. and Vesuvius. RHIM is undoubtedly more aware than anyone of the need to “strike while the iron is hot”, but the announcement on 27 October extending the initial PUSU deadline by 28 days to 24 November highlights the additional complexities where a transaction is likely to face close regulatory scrutiny.

When Vesuvius announced on 29 September that it had received a series of unsolicited indicative proposals from RHIM, the two had already been in discussions for over 12 months. The latest proposal, at the end of August, was a mix of cash and shares and, at the time, valued Vesuvius at approximately £1.4 billion. That proposal is supported by a hard (but time-limited) irrevocable undertaking from Vesuvius’ largest shareholder, Cevian Capital (holding 23%).

The Vesuvius board has been more cautious about expressing an opinion publicly on any financial terms and is clearly conscious of the potential execution risks, stating at the time of extending the PUSU deadline: “Headline agreement has now been reached on a disposal revenue threshold with respect to any potential remedies to be offered by RHIM to satisfy certain anti-trust conditions, together with a related reverse break fee.” If this were to proceed, it would potentially be the first Reverse Break Fee of 2026 (or 2027).

Except in certain limited circumstances (e.g., a formal sale process with dispensation from the Panel), break fees payable by the Target are prohibited (Rule 21.2 Offer Related Arrangements). Reverse break fees payable by the Bidder are, however, generally permitted (Rule 21.2(b)(v) with Practice Statement 29 providing further guidance).

Reverse break fees are generally only seen where there is a significant risk of a regulatory or competition authority intervening, or the offer is conditional on approval by the Bidder’s own shareholders. Last year, four bids were subject to reverse break fees: (American Axle/Dowlais – Bidder recommendation/shareholder approval; Greencore/Bakkavor – Bidder recommendation/regulatory conditions; Qualcomm/Alphawave – regulatory conditions; Dundee Precious Metals/Adriatic Metals – shareholder approval). Of these, the Qualcomm reverse break fee of US$175 million (subject to adjustment) was easily the largest.

LOOKING AHEAD

Spring not winter?

Last November was not quiet, with three firm and eight possible offer announcements. These included AIM, ASX and JSE-listed potash developer Kore Potash announcing that it had commenced a formal sale process. Twelve months on, and as one of the companies with the longest-running offer periods on the Panel’s Disclosure Table (second only to Spire Healthcare Group, which coincidentally announced a formal recommended offer from Toscafund 12 months after its sale process and offer period started), could this be the month for the process started by Kore, named after the daughter of Zeus (also known as Persephone) the goddess of Spring and the personification of growth and vegetation, to start to show its first green shoots?

One of the other possible offers disclosed last November was Jiangxi Copper Company Limited’s approach to SolGold. Jangxi went on to make a recommended £867 million cash offer on Christmas Eve that completed in March this year. One of SolGold’s substantial shareholders was ASX-listed DGR Global Limited. DGR is focussed on founding and backing resource companies. The founder and managing director, Nick Mather, was also a director and former CEO of SolGold. Investors in DGR were expecting a payday from the company’s successful backing of SolGold, and some were frustrated at the amount of cash DGR planned to keep for future investments in exploration companies rather than distribute. Events led one DGR shareholder to make a submission to the Australian Takeovers Panel in relation to substantial holder disclosures in June 2026 by DGR’s largest shareholder, Tenstar Trading Limited, which reported its voting power as being 23.1%.

The Australian Takeovers Panel found that Samuel Holdings Pty Ltd (DGR’s second largest shareholder which had filed a substantial holder disclosure at the end of May 2026 reporting voting power of 19.9%), Tenstar and other persons and entities were associates in relation to DGR for the purposes of the application and last month ordered, among other things, that shares held by Samuel Holdings and Tenstar in DGR above a combined 20% (20% being the approximate equivalent in Australia of the 30% control threshold under the UK Code) be vested in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) (on trust for Samuel Holdings and Tenstar) and sold. The press release issued by the Australian Takeovers Panel commented that “the circumstances in these proceedings are amongst the most serious examples of the market operating on an uninformed basis that the Panel has seen”.

P2P Financing

After several months of positive financing conditions, sentiment in the debt markets turned in mid-October. Brent crude prices remained volatile amid the continuing war in the Middle East, euro area inflation rose to 3.8% in September and concerns about France’s public finances added to the pressure. AI uncertainties, which had already impacted software credits earlier in the year, were the other main driver . There was a sell-off in telecoms names, led by VMED O2 and VodafoneZiggo, and the secondary market weakened as a result. By late October, only 16% of European loans were trading at par or above, compared with around 42% a month earlier.

Some issuers, notably those with a French connection, chose to postpone planned debt raisings. Both Circet, a French telecoms infrastructure provider, and Idemia, the biometrics and ID services company, pulled their proposed loans from syndication. However, despite these signs of diminishing appetite, several jumbo syndicated loan deals still cleared. Everllence, the former Volkswagen engine and turbine business recently acquired by Bain, priced a €2.35 billion euro tranche at E+350 bps and a 99.75 OID alongside a $2.71 billion dollar tranche. Madison Air’s $2.89 billion equivalent euro-dollar loan to fund its acquisition of German fan-maker EBM-Papst was accelerated on the strength of buyside demand. Clearly, liquidity is still available, but lenders are now more selective. High-quality borrowers in the ‘right’ industry and the ‘right’ jurisdiction can still access debt – but they may need to pay more for it. One buysider estimated that a deal that would recently have priced in the high-300 bps would now be in the low-400 bps “if not wider”.

Only one bid for a UK public company in October used debt finance, and that was Ember Infrastructure’s offer for subsea infrastructure specialist Ashtead Technology. The sterling debt package consists of a £50 million Revolving Credit Facility and a £300 million 12-month bridge loan, provided by Santander and intended to be refinanced by a high-yield bond. The bridge loan is initially priced at S+475 bps, increasing by 0.25% every quarter. If the bond is not issued within 12 months, the borrower has the option to extend the bridge loan by a further six months subject to payment of a 0.50% extension fee. This demonstrates that, while the debt markets may be adopting a selective stance, bidders looking at high-quality targets in attractive industries can still access financing.

Equity Capital Markets

UK ECM activity continued to pick up in October. Airtel Money completed its IPO, which has been reported as the largest UK IPO in five years, and Abenójar Tungsten launched its IPO, alongside a number of follow-on raises. Serica Energy is also set to complete its move from AIM.

Airtel Money IPO completes

Further to our September update, Airtel Mobile Commerce N.V. (“Airtel Money”) was admitted to the ESCC category and the Main Market on 14 October, with a market capitalisation of c. £5.3 billion at a 196p offer price. Gibson Dunn acted as counsel to the underwriters.

Abenójar Tungsten IPO

On 30 October, Abenójar Tungsten, S.A., a Spanish-incorporated tungsten company, completed its IPO, with its entire issued share capital of 474,693,294 shares admitted to the ESCC category and to trading on the Main Market under the ticker “ABT”. The all-primary offer and direct subscriptions raised gross proceeds of c. £142.5 million, including c. £5 million from a RetailBook retail offer. The offer was priced at 110p, at the lower end of the 110p–140p range, implying a market capitalisation of c. £522.2 million, with a public float of c. 25.9%.

Follow-on equity raises

Informa plc raised c. £940 million (c. 8.7% of share capital) on 6 October at 860p, a discount of c. 0.2%, through an intraday accelerated bookbuild, a RetailBook retail offer and a management subscription. The proceeds will part-fund its c. £2.24 billion acquisition of B2B live events business Clarion Events.

Pennon Group plc announced on 7 October a fully underwritten 7 for 15 rights issue to raise c. £550 million at 250p, a 35.5% discount to the theoretical ex-rights price, to fund investment in its regulated water businesses. Notably, the rights issue is being made on the basis of an offering circular rather than a prospectus, relying on the exemption in PRM 1.4.3R(3).

Other secondary offerings included Cornish Metals plc (c. £135 million), Invinity Energy Systems plc (c. £25 million), Ondine Biomedical Inc. (c. £10 million) and 4basebio PLC (c. £19 million).

AIM to Main Market step-ups

Serica Energy plc completed its move from AIM to the ESCC category and the Main Market by way of introduction on 27 October, with trading on AIM cancelled at the same time. Its shares now trade under the ticker “SER”.

ABOUT THE UK PUBLIC M&A TEAM

Gibson Dunn’s London Public M&A team advises bidders, targets and financial advisers on UK takeover transactions. We publish this monthly tracker to share what we’re seeing in the market. If you’d like to discuss any of the trends covered here, we’d be glad to hear from you.

Key Contacts:

Will McDonald Partner, London	Chris Haynes Partner, London	David Irvine Partner, London	Kavita Davis Partner, London
James Addison Of Counsel, London	Thomas Barker Of Counsel, London	Joe Newitt Senior Counsel, London	Lindsay Edkins Senior Counsel, London
Lauren Richardson Associate, London	George Holman Associate, London	Pete Usher Associate, London	Libby Sycamore Associate, London

Attorney Advertising: These materials were prepared for general informational purposes only based on information available at the time of publication and are not intended as, do not constitute, and should not be relied upon as, legal advice or a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. Gibson Dunn (and its affiliates, attorneys, and employees) shall not have any liability in connection with any use of these materials. The sharing of these materials does not establish an attorney-client relationship with the recipient and should not be relied upon as an alternative for advice from qualified counsel. Please note that facts and circumstances may vary, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

UK Public M&A: The Month in a Minute (October 2026)

Related Capabilities