📰On The Record – 11th July 2026

EasyJet ditched its support for Castlelake's £5.5 billion offer and jumped into bed with Apollo Global Management instead, backing a sweetened £5.7 billion bid worth 715p a share. Founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou threw his weight behind Apollo too, which matters more than the extra 3.6% premium suggests — when the founder who still owns a hefty chunk of the airline picks a side, boards tend to listen. Apollo now has until August to seal the deal, but this bidding war says something bigger: private equity still sees serious value in Europe's battered airlines, premium or no premium.

Shein's Hong Kong IPO, expected as early as September and potentially valuing the fast-fashion giant at $40–50 billion, is about to do something no boardroom memo ever could: drag founder Sky Xu into public view. After failed listing attempts in New York and London, and years of near-total secrecy, Xu is running out of places to hide from regulators and investors who want to know exactly who's running the show. It's a reminder that going public isn't just a fundraising event — it's a personality test, and Xu's about to sit his first exam.

Commission has ordered Meta to redesign features like infinite scrolling and autoplay on Facebook and Instagram, warning of fines up to 6% of global revenue under the Digital Services Act. Meta says safeguards like Teen Accounts already exist. Either way, the message from Brussels is blunt: engagement-by-design now carries a regulatory price tag, not just an ethical one.

Facewatch, already used by Sainsbury's, Spar and B&M, is rolling out facial recognition that alerts police within seconds when a flagged repeat offender walks in. Retailers call it a shoplifting fix; civil liberties groups call it surveillance creep with real risks of misidentification and bias. Either way, UK high streets just got a lot more automated — and a lot less anonymous.

Xavier Niel's investment vehicle Vega has bought a 16.2% stake in Vodafone worth roughly £4.4 billion from UAE's e&, making Niel the telecoms giant's biggest shareholder. He insists there's no takeover plan, but a stake that size buys influence whether or not it buys control — CEO Margherita Della Valle's turnaround just gained a very powerful new voice in the room.

SK Hynix, Nvidia's key memory chip supplier, surged on its Nasdaq debut after a record $26.5 billion listing — the largest ever by a foreign company. The company plans to plough proceeds into expanding production, especially in the US. It's the clearest sign yet that the AI boom isn't just lifting chipmakers — it's reshaping where global capital wants to live.

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou didn't need a formal vote to move markets — just a public nod toward Apollo's £5.7 billion offer was enough to strengthen the bid over its rival. It's a sharp reminder that founder influence doesn't disappear just because a company's gone public; it just goes quiet until a moment like this. For any leader building a business today, the lesson is simple: the goodwill you bank early can still swing outcomes decades later.

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A year ago, on 10th July 2025, President Trump announced the US would slap a 35% tariff on Canadian imports from August 1st, escalating a trade war that had seemed to be cooling. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it steadfast bullying of workers and businesses, and stock futures wobbled instantly on the news. A year on, with bidding wars and record IPOs dominating headlines, it's worth remembering how quickly a single social media post once moved global markets — some things never change.

What it means: HBM is a type of memory chip stacked vertically to move data faster while using less power — think of it as swapping a single-lane road for a multi-lane motorway. It's the exact technology powering Nvidia's AI chips, and it's why SK Hynix's Wall Street debut landed with such a bang: whoever supplies the motorway gets paid every time traffic increases.