Fitch Solutions has acquired Trepp, Inc (specialist data provider for commercial real estate and structured finance, named after its founder, Richard Trepp) from DMGT (owned by Jersey-domiciled RCHL, Rothermere Continuation Holdings Limited, 75% controlled by Jonathan Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere) for $1bn. Sellers were advised by Centerview Partners and Goldman Sachs.
AI advice and AI advice driven execution is a wake-up call to wealth managers charging high fees.
In the US, Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) fell by 8% as news of AI platform Altruist's new product, that unleashes AI-powered tax planning within its Hazel platform caused a stir amongst investors.
In the UK, IG Index dropped 3%, CMC Markets dropped 3.5% and AJ Bell dropped 6.27%.
Hargreaves Lansdown has begun life as a private company this year, 2025.
The UK's largest direct-to-consumer investment platform agreed to be sold to a private equity consortium in August last year (following an initial approach in April) comprised of CVC Advisers, Nordic Capital and Platinum Ivy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
The offer of 1,140 pence per share was a premium of 54% of the share price prior to the April approach and valued the firm at £5.44 billion pounds.
Richard Flint (ex Head of Sky Betting and Gaming, which he led through a period of growth), fulfils the role of Interim CEO, with Darren Worth as Interim CFO. The management are investing in a technology-led transformation to improve HL's propositioning.
Hargreaves Lansdown PLC was delisted from the London Stock Exchange on the 25 March 2025 and initially owned by Harp Bidco Limited, which was renamed in September 2025 to Hargreaves Lansdown Group Limited.
BitPanda, the crypto exchange, has ruled out a London listing.
The stuff CFOs do that can be called "busywork" is automated in the vision offered by Ramp. The product has gained traction with a number of Finance teams already. This latest financing round is a Series-E2, valuing the company at $22.5bn. ICONIQ led the round with other investors including Thiel's Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, 8VC, Definition Capital, General Catalyst and others.
Circle Internet Group, specializing in digital currencies and blockchains, went public on June 5, 2025. It debuted under ticker symbol CRCL. The IPO was priced at $31 a share, with shares surging over 100% on the first day, hitting a market cap of nearly $60bn albeit brief. Circle was launched in 2013.
This success is significant for the crypto and fintech space.
CEO Jeremy Allaire has previously argued governments and policy makers need to "create more degrees of freedom for innovation to happen".
Allaire was co-founder of Allaire Corporation in 1995 which had an IPO in January 1999, and is hence no stranger to the public markets.
Allaire Corporation was acquired by Macromedia in 2001 after which JA became CTO of Macromedia. He left in 2003 to join General Catalyst as a technologist and executive-in-residence.
UK Software M&A was worth £13.2 billion last year, with deployments across 420 deals, a 27% rise from the previous year. Certainly there have been and still are economic headwinds, but according to a recent study by BearingPoint Capital, private equity appetite for such deals (Software and Software-as-a-Service) remains resilient. The UK is responsible for a third of all software buyouts in Europe. Technology due diligence, with cyber diligence as a related but often separated area, are becoming increasingly important.
Senator William ("Bill") Hagerty (Republican), who had a pre-politics career at the Boston Consulting Group, is pushing for the GENIUS Act to be passed.
The GENIUS Act stands for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins and per Hagerty "creates a strong, forward-looking regulatory framework to modernize our payment systems and affirms the dominance of the US dollar".
The UK has been proactive in creating conditions for stablecoin development in the UK but has come under criticism for overly constraining market development.
As a sidebar, stablecoins are digital assets which can be used to make payments. These so-called "coins" can be created technology companies rather than traditional banks and are backed by equivalent currency in a 1:1 ratio. They are thus less volatile than traditional cryptocurrencies.
FIS has announced it will purchase Global Payments' (GPN) issuer solutions business for $12bn, with GPN intending to buy WorldPay for $22.7bn
(Note: WorldPay is 45% owned by FIS and 55% owned by Chicago private equity firm GTCR).
GPN is essentially divesting (issuer solutions) and investing (WorldPay), with a net investment of $10.7bn.
GPN is run by Cameron Bready, who moved up from the CFO role, and was formerly of ITC Holdings Corp, electricity transmission company (publicly traded), where he focused on Finance and corporate development and prior to that was at Northeast utilities. He studied business in Atlanta. What remains in Global Payments following the divestment should be clearly understood - of course WorldPay will be a new integration.
Lots of analyst commentary has bubbled up around this deal with Mizuho commenting FIS is "winning the trade" as it acquires a "stable grower". Less commentary has surrounded GPN (GPN-WorldPay) specifically.
Tegus research platform, data and workflow tools are in scope.
AlphaSense has stated the transaction will add breadth to its private company data. Integrating the data will enable clients to extract proprietary insights easily, such as by using AlphaSense's AI and Search capabilities.
