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M&A hub: Developments driving and shaping M&A
Key legal and regulatory developments driving and shaping M&A
United Kingdom | Publication | September 2023
On 18 September 2024, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) published its final Recommendations for nature-related risk management and disclosure. These provide companies and financial institutions of all sizes with a risk management and disclosure framework to identify, assess, manage and, where appropriate, disclose nature-related issues.
The TNFD Recommendations build on those of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and they include 14 recommended disclosures covering nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. They have been designed to:
An accompanying suite of additional guidance has also been released to help market participants begin to develop integrated assessment and corporate reporting related to nature. This can be accessed via the Recommendations and the Executive Summary (see links below). It includes particular guidance for financial institutions, with further sector and biome guidance to be developed.
The TNFD is encouraging and supporting voluntary market adoption of the Recommendations and, following the example of the TCFD, the TNFD will track voluntary market adoption on an annual basis through an annual status update report beginning in 2024. The TNFD is expecting companies to start announcing their intention to adopt the Recommendations shortly. GSK are reported to have announced they are committed to publishing their first TNFD disclosures from 2026, based on 2025 data. Others are expected to signal similar intentions soon and the TNFD will announce an inaugural list of TNFD Adopters, companies that have indicated their intention to start adopting the Recommendations, at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January 2024.
(TNFD, Recommendations of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, 18.09.2023)
(TNFD, Executive Summary of the TFND Recommendations, 18.09.2023)
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Key legal and regulatory developments driving and shaping M&A
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The private credit market and direct lending have grown and diversified immensely in the past decade, offering alternative sources and terms of debt compared to those historically provided by the syndicated leveraged loan and public issuance markets. Consequently, they are fast becoming pivotal components in the capital ecosystem, so much so that the Bank of England consider that the private credit market is currently responsible for approximately $1.8 trillion of debt issuance, which is four times its size in 2015. This growth has been particularly pronounced in Europe and the US but there has also been significant activity in Asia.
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The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Regulation, commonly referred to as the AI Act, is expected to come into force during the summer of 2024 (the AI Act). The AI Act will be the first comprehensive legal framework for the use and development of artificial intelligence (AI), and is intended to ensure that AI systems developed and used in the EU are safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly.
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