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Prologis takes £12.6bn Segro bid public after rejection

25 Jun 2026 Jun 25, 2026

UK 7 min read

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The UK take-private wave just found its biggest target yet. US warehouse giant Prologis took its £12.6bn bid for UK logistics group Segro public this week after the FTSE 100 board rejected it, according to Reuters and the FT.

It’s the biggest single attempt on a UK-listed company so far this year and it fits a striking pattern: PwC’s mid-year outlook shows megadeals above $5bn now account for nearly half of all global M&A value, double their share from two years ago. The mid-market is shrinking; the giants are eating each other.

And in other news this week:

H.B. Fuller is nearing a £628m deal for UK medtech AMS, despite months of activist pushback from US shareholder Ancora
Ari Emanuel’s Mari is in talks to acquire UK theatre group ATG for $6bn
Citigroup hiked bonuses for its top UK investment bankers by 24%, with London MDs averaging $1.5m and three breaking $11m

Thanks for reading, and connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to discuss how I can help with your next M&A deal.

Deal Tracker

Our weekly roundup of confirmed M&A deals in the UK.

Transaction	Sectors	Buyer	Buyer’s advisors	Seller’s advisors
01 Innagreen acquired 49.9-MW solar project from RES in England	Energy	Innagreen	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
02 ContourGlobal acquired 500-MW/2-GWh BESS project in Scotland in UK debut	Energy	ContourGlobal	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
03 Enviromena snaps up 26-MWp UK solar project from Luminous Energy	Energy	Enviromena	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
04 Fuse Energy grows UK portfolio with 25-MW solar project acquisition	Energy	Fuse Energy	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
05 Rivington Energy sold 50-MW British BESS to Schroders Greencoat	Energy	Revington Energy	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
06 Finastra offloaded Universal Banking division to Pollen Street Capital	Financial services	Pollen Street Capital	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
07 Wise acquired expat information platform Expatica	Financial services	Wise	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
08 HIG-backed Axis CLC acquired Fieldway Group	Business Services	Axis CLC	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
09 Hyve acquired C-suite community platform Virtuosi League	Business Services	Hyve	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
10 AcadeMedia acquired UK-based Chestnut Nursery Schools	Education	AcadeMedia	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
11 Infoshare acquired 3C Consultants.	TMT	Infoshare	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
12 PayPoint Group acquired Aperidata	Financial services	PayPoint Group	Not disclosed	Not disclosed
13 Balbec Capital LP acquired Funding 365	Financial services	Balbec Capital LP	Not disclosed	Not disclosed

The rumour mill

Industry news

Salaries and bonuses

Job moves

Market trends

Global M&A gets its groove back?

Global M&A is on track for $4 trillion in 2026, the strongest year since 2021, but the headline flatters the reality underneath. PwC’s mid-year outlook shows megadeals above $5bn now account for nearly half of all deal value, double their share from two years ago. Strip them out, and the market is actually shrinking. Volume is falling while value climbs. Fewer people are at the table, and the ones who are arrived with very large cheques.

The mid-market is still grinding through valuation gaps, stubborn exit backlogs, and buyer caution on anything exposed to AI disruption. Software M&A has cooled, while infrastructure, power, data centres, and grid are pulling the capital that used to flow into enterprise tech. The recovery looks highly selective, and the selectivity is only tightening.

What’s your tech worth?

Aventis Advisors spent June mapping private market AI multiples and found them running from 7x to 80x forward revenue, with a median around 29x. This suggests a market where narrative still sets the price more than fundamentals do.

The companies at the top are being valued on the assumption that their momentum holds and that no frontier lab ships a competing product tomorrow. Both assumptions are fragile.

The fault line runs through private credit too. Pitchbook’s direct lending desk spoke to a number of European lenders this month and found the software conversation is less about panic and more about price discovery. Speaking at SuperReturn in Berlin, Bridgepoint Credit’s Andrew Cleland-Bogle was direct: some managers are going to zero on software right now, and he thinks that’s a mistake.

Arcmont’s Mattis Poetter sees a distinction between deeply embedded systems of record that clients won’t rip out for a modest cost saving and point solutions sitting on top of those systems, which AI-native challengers can already rebuild faster and cheaper. Lenders aren’t necessarily fleeing the sector, but they’re asking whether the right multiple is 15-18x or 10-12x, and taking longer to answer.

Europe is rearming

PitchBook’s latest data shows VC funding into European aerospace and defence approaching €19bn in 2025, with 2026 already tracking at pace and deal count at record highs.

The growth curve stopped looking like a venture trend some time ago. It looks like a rearmament programme expressed in term sheets.

The US-Iran conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a security architecture fracturing in real time have given European governments a spending urgency they hadn’t felt in a generation. Germany, France, and the EU’s ReArm Europe programme together put well over €1 trillion of committed defence expenditure on the table through 2030.

The irony is that 98% of deal value in European defence VC rounds still involves foreign investors, up from 96.5% last year. Helsing and Stark, two of the continent’s most prominent defence tech names, were backed by General Catalyst and Sequoia. New vehicles like the €500 million E2D fund from AVP and Earlybird are pushing back, and BAE Systems’ direct LP commitments signal domestic primes are waking up.

But the dependency won’t shift quickly. For UK dealmakers, the window is in spotting where homegrown institutional capital is quietly building conviction before the American funds get there.