Daniel Black
Stelios Haji-Ioannou started easyJet with two leased aircraft in 1995. This week, shareholders voted to hand the airline to Apollo in a £5.7bn takeover.
It is one of the biggest examples of a trend the FT has just analysed. Over the past decade, overseas buyers have acquired more than 300 UK companies worth over £500bn, and no other major market has lost a bigger share of its listings.
In this week’s editorial, I look at why the traffic now runs one way, and what the gap in domestic ownership has to do with it.
Our own tracker told a more balanced story. Around eight of the week’s deals took UK and Irish buyers abroad, from AstraZeneca’s purchase of US vaccine developer Omniose to Virgin Active’s entry into Germany.
In total, we tracked 41 deals, and these three stood out.
- Samsung Fire & Marine, KKR and Korea Investment Corporation have agreed to buy 60% of Lloyd’s insurer Canopius for around $2.2bn.
- Peel has closed its £632m offer for Harworth Group
- Main Capital Partners has completed its £231.2m takeover of education software provider Tribal Group.
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Weekly summary | 13.11.2026
Our Deals Tracker picked up 41 deals with UK and Irish involvement this week.
Technology led with seven transactions, ahead of business services (from consultancies to security and fire safety specialists) and real estate on six each. The biggest ticket was the reported $2.2bn buyout of the remaining 60% of Lloyd’s insurer Canopius by Samsung Fire & Marine, KKR and Korea Investment Corporation.
Buyers looked beyond Britain. In a week when our editorial tracks the flow of UK companies into foreign hands, our tracker leaned the other way. Around eight deals took UK and Irish buyers abroad, including AstraZeneca’s purchase of US vaccine developer Omniose.
Insurers kept consolidating. Specialty and closed-book insurance remained busy, with Chesnara agreeing to buy MetLife’s UK life book, its fourth deal in two years.
Property kept moving. Six real estate deals ranged from regional office buildings to an Amsterdam living campus. Peel also closed its £632m offer for Harworth, which is set to leave the London market.
The one-way street of UK takeovers
Britain is still one of the easiest places in the world to buy a company, but it’s getting much harder to find British companies doing the buying.
A new FT analysis of four decades of deals shows that overseas buyers acquired more than 300 UK companies worth over £500bn in the past 10 years. Announced foreign takeovers of UK-listed companies have reached £73bn so far in 2026, the highest since 2018, with Intertek, Segro and easyJet among the targets.
No major market is losing more
Between 2016 and 2026, 15.3% of UK-listed companies were bought by a foreign acquirer.
- Netherlands 14.6%
- US 10.1%
- Germany 6%
- France 4.3%
Around 60% of the buyers were based in the US, and a third were backed by private equity.
The traffic now runs one way
Twenty-five years ago, BP, Vodafone and WPP were buying abroad. This year, inbound deals far outweigh outbound ones such as Shell’s $16.4bn purchase of Arc Resources.
Saul Klein of Phoenix Court calls the UK “one of the best places in the world to buy a team and one of the hardest to build an owner”.
The ownership gap
Part of the explanation sits on the shareholder register. UK pension schemes hold only about 3% of their assets in UK-listed equities, leaving few long-term investors to back a board that wants to reject a bid, as AstraZeneca’s did against Pfizer in 2014.
From 2028, ministers will be able to require some pension funds to invest up to 10% in UK companies and private assets.
What it means for dealmakers
For advisers, overseas demand for UK assets remains a steady source of mandates. For boards, it pays to build a credible standalone case early, because the domestic investors who once defended UK companies are now thin on the ground.
If the pension reforms bring that capital back, the balance could start to shift from 2028.
Jobs Highlights
Rumour mill
- 80 Mile has extended the deadline for Greenland Energy to firm up its all-share offer once again.
- A Poundland suitor is urging lender Gordon Brothers to release funding so it can complete a rescue deal for the discount retailer, Sky News reports.
- BC Partners is seeking to take control of LIV Golf from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to the FT.
- First Tin has extended its PUSU deadline to 20 November after Metals X tabled a revised cash proposal of 16.5p per share.
- Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse, home to a hotel and music venue, has been put up for sale with a £36.6m price tag.
Job moves
- A&L Goodbody has appointed Mark Stockdale as head of its Northern Ireland office.
- Addleshaw Goddard has hired a three-partner team to bolster its private equity platform.
- Former Cipla chief executive Umang Vohra will join Hikma’s board as a non-executive director on 1 December.
- Former Hitachi Energy chief executive Claudio Facchin has been named chairman of grid technology firm Reactive Technologies.
- Julian Morse becomes sole chief executive of Cavendish as co-CEO John Farrugia leaves the board.
- Payne Hicks Beach has strengthened its private wealth offering with two new partners.
- Raspberry Pi has appointed CFO Timothy Powell to its board as Richard Boult steps down.
- TT Electronics has appointed Alexander Paiusco of shareholder DBAY Advisors as a non-executive director.
M&A
- Botswana will double its stake in De Beers to 30% under the Global Diamond Consortium’s winning bid, smoothing Anglo American’s exit from the diamond miner.
- BP has completed its farm-in to Eco Atlantic’s Namibian offshore portfolio, taking operated stakes in the blocks.
- DNO’s offer for Capricorn Energy has lapsed, leaving Genel’s recommended bid of around $436m as the only offer on the table.
- easyJet shareholders have approved Apollo-backed Eagle Bidco’s £5.7bn takeover, which now heads to court for sanction.
- JPMorgan US Smaller Companies Investment Trust has published the circular for its proposed combination with Brown Advisory US Smaller Companies.
Venture & fundraising
- Cornish Metals shareholders have approved a £135m raise from the National Wealth Fund, Vision Blue and Glencore, clearing the way for a final investment decision on South Crofty.
- Foresight Enterprise VCT has published a prospectus for a new share offer of up to £20m.
- Generative video start-up Anorak has raised $5m from investors including Supercell and Play Ventures.
- GraphEnergyTech has completed the first close of a seed round targeting £3m.
- Insurtech Ancep has raised $8.5m for AI agents that help brokers place smaller risks.
- Lender Salad has secured £1.5m from City Bridge Foundation to expand affordable credit for underserved Londoners.
- Octopus has launched a $600m fund to invest in renewable energy across Asia.
- Oncology biotech Neobe has raised $6.8m to help cancer treatments overcome the barriers that stop them working.
- Planky has secured €6.9m to scale its AI-driven credit decisioning platform.
- StirlingX has closed a $6m Series A extension and appointed Magnus Grimeland to its board.
- Syncona-backed Kesmalea Therapeutics has raised $60m in a Series A to develop protein degraders for Alzheimer’s and rebranded as Oyster Therapeutics.
- Tano has raised $5m to turn creators into a fully fledged advertising channel.
Regulatory
- Goldman Sachs Alternatives has notified the CCPC of its proposed acquisition of building safety testing group Celnor.
- Musgrave has notified the CCPC of its plan to buy O’Brien’s Centra store in Mullingar.
- The CMA has given AkzoNobel and Axalta a week to offer remedies for their $25bn merger or face an in-depth phase 2 investigation.
- The CMA has launched a merger inquiry into Pilgrim’s Europe’s purchase of Walkers Deli & Sausage Co from Samworth Brothers.
- The CMA has raised competition concerns over McCormick’s $65bn deal for Unilever’s foods business and set an 18 November deadline for remedies.
- TSB has announced the transfer of its banking business to Santander UK, a key step in integrating the lender after Santander’s takeover.
