AG
Addleshaw Goddard
More
Addleshaw Goddard is an international law firm, almost 250 years in the making. We’re trusted by over 5000 organisations, including 50 FTSE 100 companies, to solve problems, deliver deals, defend rights, comply with regulations and mitigate risk. Our work spans more than 50 areas of business law for clients across multiple industries in over 100 countries worldwide. And while the challenges our clients bring us may vary, we approach and solve them with the same, single-minded focus: finding the smartest way to achieve the biggest impact.
Hello and welcome to the Merge Espresso Christmas special. All you need to know about corporate finance in the time it takes to make your seasonal gingerbread latte. I’m Lucy Robson.
United Kingdom
Finance and Banking
To print this article, all you need is to be registered or login on Mondaq.com.
Article Insights
Simon Wood’s articles from Addleshaw Goddard are most popular:
with Senior Company Executives, HR and Finance and Tax Executives
in United Kingdom
with readers working within the Accounting & Consultancy and Law Firm industries
self
Access the transcript
Lucy Robson
Hello and welcome to the Merge Espresso Christmas special. All
you need to know about corporate finance in the time it takes to
make your seasonal gingerbread latte. I’m Lucy Robson.
Simon Wood
Christmas special. All you need to know about corporate finance
in the time it takes.
Simon Wood
And I’m Simon Wood with crowdsourced Merch Espresso’s
faithful listeners for their festive corporate finance review of
the year.
Lucy Robson
So first up, we asked, in the absence of a chimney, could Santa
visit Merge Express’s house through the famed IPO window?
There’s a general consensus that he could wriggle through in
2026, but it might be a tight squeeze.
Simon Wood
And perhaps he can take hearts from the performance of notable
2025 IPOs, including AG’s own deals on Applied Nutrition and
Beauty Tech, all of which are up on their initial IPO price, with a
particular shout out for MHA up a whopping 87%.
Lucy Robson
Great stuff. And similar sentiments about ranking this last
corporate finance year by reference to Christmas dinner. No
crackers or turkeys, but a lot of green shoots in the form of
Brussels sprouts. Well, I’m not sure I’ll be trying
that.
Simon Wood
We also considered share price performance of various sadly
fictitious Christmas movies public companies. The Snowman PLC being
the clear market leader, leaving CEOs George Bailey, Macaulay
Culkin and John McClure to consider their strategic options. But my
value pick for the festive film sector would be Gremlin’s PLC,
an underloved stock with very solid fundamentals.
Lucy Robson
So Christmas party season is in full swing this week, including
AG’s own event marking the opening of our new offices at
Lothbury. But it sounds like it’s been a pretty muted affair
elsewhere. We asked you to rank your firm’s corporate
finance… We asked you to rank your firm’s Christmas party by
reference to a corporate finance deal. And Fred Rescue Rights’
issue came out on top. Dear bad times.
Simon Wood
Well, finally, in recognition of the sacrifices that Merge
Espresso’s families have made to accommodate our respective
career choices, we asked for your favourite horror story from a
deal of Christmas past.
Lucy Robson
Yeah, it was a clear and pretty grim winner. People getting
stuck at a client’s offices, several miles outside a city which
will not be named, six inches of snow, public transport all
stopped, six people getting in one Ford Fiesta to drive back into
the city. Grim times.
Simon Wood
…and on that highly seasonal note, we hope that you all
have a fantastic festive break and best wishes for 2026.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.