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Any concerns about the M&A market at the start of the year have largely been put to rest by a strong first half. We’ve had three $1.5 billion+ deals in a little over 30 days. Could more be on the way? |
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Hyve To Be Acquired by PE Firm Hellman & Friedman |
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London-based Hyve Group, which operates Shoptalk, Possible and HLTH, announced on Monday that PE firm Hellman & Friedman would be acquiring the business. This comes three years after the brand was taken private by Providence Equity Partners and Searchlight Capital. |
Read full story here. |
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With Event Deals Surging, LegalTechTalk May Be a Target |
LegalTechTalk—a three-year-old event company focused on tech innovation in the legal industry—holds its third iteration this month, with an expected crowd of 5,500 and over 400 speakers at London's InterContinental O2. |
Built by two people with zero legal experience—but plenty of events experience—LegalTechTalk has been approached by several events companies who want to buy the burgeoning group. They hired an advisor to handle the inquiries. |
That follows a larger trend with some of the biggest event companies buying such younger, niche founder-led events that build strong communities in fast-growing sectors, among them: |
Digital Health Intelligence launched its flagship Rewired event in 2019 and was acquired by CloserStill Media in 2025. Healthcare conference HLTH, founded in 2018 and acquired by Hyve Group in 2024. Money20/20, started in 2012 and now one of fintech's defining events, ended up inside Ascential, which was acquired by Informa in a £1.2 billion deal.
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The events industry has seen a recent surge in deal announcements with CloserStill Media, Questex, Emerald and Hyve being sold to private equity firms. |
Get Those Speakers |
LegalTechTalk was founded by Bradley Collins and Mikkel Jensen, who met at Insurtech Insights, an insurance technology conference company that sold to Emerald last year. Collins also previously worked at Centaur Media and Ascential. |
They chose the legal industry because they saw that investment in legal tech startups was booming—it helps that ChatGPT had just made its big launch around that time. |
“All of that [AI] stuff started happening, and we're like, we have absolutely nailed this because one sector that's definitely going to get completely turned upside down is law,” Collins told AMO. “It's language, it's rules, it's regulations, it's contracts, it's documents, it's evidence, it's literally words on paper for the large part.” |
In its first year, “Europe's Event for Legal Transformation” saw 2,500 people attending with some 300 speakers. It was not smooth going. They tried to raise £1 million to pay for the production and only got to £100,000. Collins put in a small loan and they hired one person and put a deposit down on the venue. |
“Then we just prayed that we could make money quickly,” Collins said. They brought on a chief commercial officer—Jo Dixon—who closed her first deal of $30,000 in less than a month. "When that contract signed, I actually fell off my chair, and then we knew we had a business.” |
That's not to say it got any easier. Because they weren't from the legal sector, the industry doubted that the event was going to succeed, so much so that people were saying it would be the Fyre Festival (a failed luxury music festival in the Bahamas in 2017) of the legal world. |
The response they were getting from the industry was: "If my competitor signs up, I'll sign up too." Nobody wanted to be first. |
But as they started getting people to agree to speak—whether or not they had actually confirmed—they posted and promoted them. |
"Half of them, they didn't know if they were confirmed or not, and they were calling each other up, going, 'Are you actually going to speak at this thing?’” Collins said. “Anyway, we got enough traction that they all came, I think a lot of people were 50-50 but no one wanted to kind of miss this thing that was happening. It was going to be a thing, whether it's good or bad… and it all came together very well.” |
It came together so well that they won two awards, including the annual PPA Award's event of the year for exceptional value to audiences and sponsors, ongoing post-event content and dedication to diversity and sustainability. |
This year, they are expecting people from 75 countries at the event, and they are poised to announce that they will be landing in Miami in December 2027 at Fontainebleau Miami Beach, where they have 50 launch partners and 70 speakers confirmed already. |
The Money Picture |
The first year cost £1 million to put on, with revenue coming in at about the same level. The cash flow worked because they were able to delay payments for supplies until after the event, though they did make a small loss. In 2025, spending more than doubled to £2.5 million—they invested heavily in production (and coffee)—and revenue reached £3 million. |
This year, they expect revenue just shy of £7 million and a profit margin somewhere between 40% and 50%. Revenue is split 80% sponsorship and 20% tickets, Collins said. |
Why did it work so well? |
"When we launched, everyone thought we were mad because there were so many legal events, but there were no legal events that lived up to the level of events [like]... Money2020 and Cannes Lions,” Collins said. “We bring a whole… festival style fun, people want to be there. We have 18 different musicians of different types across the two days that have been locked in, and the after party, and there's a beer garden, a vineyard, an Aperol Spritz bar, a gin bar, a mocktail bar.” |
But it's not just about the event. |
“We don't do anything that will diminish our focus on the event, but we do things that provide value to the industry, value to our sponsors year round, but also helps grow the event,” Collins said. |
That ranges from a webinar every two weeks, frequent virtual round tables every two weeks, bimonthly dinners, research reports, a digital magazine that comes out mo |
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