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.