InMarketing Today

Some 42 bids for London-listed companies are under way, worth a combined £74bn, according to a new Peel Hunt note reported by City AM. That is more than double the £35bn across 40 bids in the whole of 2025, and overseas bidders account for 64% of this year's figures. Charles Hall, Peel Hunt's head of research, said the pace of bids raises concerns that the UK equity market is seeing a 'material depopulation'. Airtel Money's £5.3bn London listing last week, the largest in five years, stands out as the exception.

A market's brand is its roll call, and the roll call is shrinking. Hall set a vivid phrase on top of hard numbers, and City AM led with the phrase, which is how an investment bank's research note becomes a headline. For advisers, brokers, custodians and investor-relations providers whose revenue depends on UK listings, the exposure is reputational as well as commercial: clients will read this narrative and ask what your firm's plan is.

Write the one-page answer before clients ask for it: how your firm earns in a market with more bids than listings, and which services you have built for it, such as take-private advice, overseas listing support or liquidity for shareholders. Then publish your own numbers, so that a rival's research does not set the terms of the conversation.

Morgan Stanley now expects to support tokenised equities on its alternative trading system in the first quarter of 2027, later than the second half of 2026 it indicated in March, The Block reports. Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital asset strategy, said the team is building the infrastructure, but that 'the client demand really isn't there because the product doesn't exist.' She pointed to a tokenisation service launching at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation at the end of this month as a milestone that could encourage more activity, and said the tokenised real-world asset market will land in a $3 trillion to $10 trillion range by 2030 'without question'.

A date announced in public is a commitment, and Oldenburg's revision is a useful model for changing one. She named the new window, gave a reason a client can test, and said what the bank is building in the meantime. She was equally plain about the wider market: 'everyone has just been going crazy with announcements', she said, adding that there is a lot of fear of missing out in the institutional space. Any firm that announced a tokenisation date in that atmosphere now faces the same question.

List every date your firm has given publicly for a product or service. For each, confirm the product exists, the dependencies are named and clients are asking for it. Where any of the three fails, revise the date now, say why in one sentence and say what you are doing next.

McKinsey has removed Chris Bradley, a senior partner in Australia, from his leadership roles, including at the McKinsey Global Institute, after an internal review of his social media comments, as Bloomberg first reported. Last month he exchanged views on LinkedIn, in a post since deleted, with an author of a new book on the 'glass cliff', the pattern of women being appointed to leadership roles in times of crisis, and questioned whether the concept exists. A McKinsey spokesperson told City AM his 'public comments fell well short of the standards we expect at our firm'. He remains a senior partner after more than 27 years at the firm.

A senior partner's personal LinkedIn account carries the firm's name whether or not the profile says so, and clients, recruits and journalists read it that way. McKinsey's reply is the part worth studying: two sentences that name the standard, the process and the outcome. The subject sits close to home for financial services, where a report found women held fewer than 20% of senior leadership roles at UK businesses in the sector.

Check whether your social media policy covers senior people's personal accounts, who reviews a complaint and how quickly. Then draft the statement you would give a journalist tomorrow; if it cannot name the standard, the process and the outcome, the policy is not finished.