Commercial Awareness

In June 2025, London’s High Court delivered a significant ruling in one of the largest insurance disputes ever in English courts, granting AerCap Ireland Ltd over $1 billion in insurance recoveries for aircraft stranded in Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The case focused on complex questions of insurance law, international sanctions, as well as the legal definition of asset loss.  Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, AerCap lost access to 11

On December 5, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix is to acquire Warner Bros.’ film and television studios as well as its streaming assets, HBO Max and HBO. The deal came about after a weeks-long bidding war, which had initially favoured Paramount, before Netflix ultimately secured Warner Bros. for US $82.7 billion (accounting for debt and other liabilities/assets). Skadden advised Netflix, whil

Once again, Microsoft is back in the UK Courts for overcharging British businesses for the use of Windows Server software. The case was filed in December 2024 by competition lawyer Dr Maria Luisa Stasi and her team at Scott + Scott LLP on behalf of approximately 60,000 UK Businesses. As of late 2025, the lawsuit is currently before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal. The tribunal will either grant a Collective Proceedings Order and allow the full trial to take place or stop

Whether or not you are an aspiring commercial lawyer, the word private equity (PE) should not be of any unfamiliarity. It is the process in which a PE firm, using funds it raised or borrowed, acquires a company. The company being acquired is called a TargetCo. After acquiring the company, the PE firm invests in its growth. This is then followed by the PE firm’s ‘exit’, which is to sell the company at a higher value than when it purchased it, profiting off the difference. In

Bitcoin is an elusive term that has puzzled many and continues to do so. In this article, I will offer a very brief introduction to this concept and introduce some of the current trends.   So what is Bitcoin? It is a form of digital money that is traded over a computer network. It is a type of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital, decentralised currency that uses cryptography for security. Yes, many key terms indeed. Cryptography is the science of coding and decoding m

The budget was announced this Wednesday (26th of November) following a shambolic leak of the key policies by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) 40 minutes prior to when the Chancellor was due to make her speech in the House of Commons. That led to immediate market reaction, bond prices and sterling began moving as markets hastily executed billions of pounds of trades. Aside from that utter fiasco, there have been a series of speculation and even rumours of Reeves bre

Traditionally, entering into a contract is a process laden with extensive negotiation, strategy, and complex language. Recently, however, with the rise of technology, there have been arguments for simplification that have taken shape in smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements with the terms written into code running on a blockchain without the need for third-party intermediaries. In essence, this means that once certain pre-requisites are executed, so

Just this week, the UK government delivered their annual budget, which is arguably the most significant fiscal update of the year. It could see entire large corporate strategies shift, changes in investment decisions and a surge in demand for legal advice from businesses in the UK. After being haunted by economic uncertainty, rising inflation and rising pressure on public finances, the Autumn Budget introduced a couple of regulatory changes and sweeping taxes that are likely

As many readers would know, there has been a sea of news about the budget being thrown around in the past few weeks. The budget is a statement made by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to MPs in the House of Commons, presenting the government’s plans for the economy, including changes to taxation and spending. The date of the budget is set on the 26 th of November, 2025. At the outset, the date was criticised by Scotland’s Finance Secretary as ‘delayed’ and that it is now ‘high

Record-breaking valuations, soaring tech stocks, and remarkable AI enthusiasm; haven’t we been here before? Every major competitor is chasing after AI integration, investment, and development; conditions that have been likened to the 90s’ dot-com boom. Consequently, financial organisations, including the Bank of England, have warned of an ‘AI bubble’ that is likely to ‘burst’ and cause a sharp market correction, i.e. a stock market crash. In this article, we look at the warni

The 2007 to 2008 financial crisis is one of the most defining and historically significant economic events in Britain’s 21st-century history. The unprecedented incident began with the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market, which sent shock waves that spread and were felt across global financial systems. This was particularly significant for the UK, whose economy relied heavily on its financial services sector. The impact exposed deep structural weaknesses in major banks

During certain economic periods, particularly when conditions tighten and borrowing costs remain very high, it seems strange that M&A can persist. This is the function of corporate carve-outs. Instead of businesses pursuing large-scale acquisitions, a growing number of businesses have chosen to divest non-core assets through this carve-out process. As this trend emerged and reshaped the M&A landscape, it has created some challenges and business opportunities for global law f

In February 2023, the footballing world was shocked when the Premier League hit Manchester City with 115 charges for allegedly breaking financial regulations between 2009 and 2018. The Premier League claimed that the club was not transparent enough regarding its sponsorship deals and payments to key staff members. Manchester City were swift to deny such allegations. Yet, the case has turned into one of the biggest tests of how far football’s rule-makers can really go when the

A new delivery giant has landed, but what does it mean legally and logistically? To start off, both DHL and Evri are well-known as parcel delivery services with an expansive presence in the UK. Their key distinctions lie in operations, whereby DHL delivers secure and high-value items through their system of couriers and vehicles. In contrast, Evri handles an abundance of lower-value parcels delivered by independent couriers in their own vehicles. Announced in May 2025, the me

In July of this year, the Privy Council’s decision in Jardines Strategic Ltd v Oasis Investments II Master Fund Ltd & Ors abolished the ‘Shareholder Rule’. To understand the case and the implications of this decision, it is important to first explore what English Legal Professional Privilege (LPP) is. LPP is a legal principle that protects privileged information and communications from disclosure in legal proceedings. In essence, it’s the rule that ensures clients that, whe

The once rapid U.S. expansion into China’s legal sphere has now fallen victim to retrenchment. After China acceded to the World Trade Organisation in the early 2000s, a surge in global trade and globalisation fuelled U.S. law firms’ expansion into the Chinese market as the need for international legal services on cross-border transactions and IPOs skyrocketed. This once-vibrant legal landscape has since declined due to geopolitical tensions, slowed economic growth, and manda

After several years of safe sailing and cheap borrowing, the global market has recently adjusted for private equity to a new and challenging landscape which includes high interest rates and higher standards of credit control and regulations. This shift in the trend has forced private equity firms to restructure their investment strategies, rethink how they add value and how they can exit deals when necessary . Due to these trends, the market has become quieter than before. T

Imagine a sovereign nation initiating legal proceedings against a supermarket chain. This may sound like a crazy hypothetical, but believe it or not this actually happened. In 2016 the Republic of Iceland, a Nordic island state with a population of approximately 370,000 started legal proceedings against Iceland Foods Ltd., the prominent UK-based frozen food retailer operating over 1,000 stores across Europe. At the heart of this conflict lies a fundamental question: can a pr

The digital pound, ‘Britcoin’, is a central bank digital currency (CBDC) proposed by the Bank of England and HM Treasury. In 2023, the Bank of England released the Digital Pound Consultation Paper. In this paper, the Bank outlined the timeline and the future need for the digital pound while weighing, to a certain extent, the benefits and detriments of introducing it. In this article, we examine the justifications for introducing the digital pound, as well as the arguments a

In September 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with 17 state attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against Amazon U.S. under antitrust law. The case alleges that Amazon has been employing unfair practices to maintain monopoly power in online retail and marketplace services. This is a significant case as it marks one of the major cases in U.S. antitrust law in relation to Big Tech’s digital dominance since the lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. The FTC’s C