India retained its position as the world’s leading market for initial public offerings (IPOs) by number of issues during FY2025-26, while ranking third globally in terms of funds raised, according to the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) Annual Report for 2025-26.

Highlighting the country’s strong primary market activity, SEBI said the equity market continued to witness robust momentum during the year despite global uncertainties marked by geopolitical conflicts, trade tensions, volatile capital flows and rapid technological changes.

“The primary equity market demonstrated continued dynamism, with India ranking first globally in the number of IPOs and third in terms of fund raised,” SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said in his statement in the report.

To sustain this momentum, the market regulator said it introduced several reforms aimed at making capital raising easier while maintaining investor protection.

Among the key measures, SEBI restructured the minimum public offer framework by linking public float requirements to issue size. It also extended the timeline for the largest listed companies to achieve the mandatory 25 per cent minimum public shareholding to 10 years, enabling large enterprises to access public markets without facing frequent dilution after listing.

The regulator further allowed founders of new-age companies to retain employee stock option plans (ESOPs) granted before an IPO, saying the move would preserve long-term incentives while ensuring transparency for public shareholders.
In his message, Pandey said India’s capital markets remained resilient during one of the most challenging years in recent times, demonstrating their ability to function efficiently despite global geopolitical conflicts, trade wars and volatile asset prices.He said SEBI’s regulatory approach had shifted towards building “resilience by design” by embedding structural integrity through optimum regulation and AI-driven oversight while simplifying compliance for market participants.

The Chairman noted that India would require significantly larger pools of capital to finance its long-term development goals, including infrastructure, manufacturing and the energy transition, adding that these investments could not be funded by the banking system alone.

According to the report, SEBI’s policy focus during the year was to strengthen the equity market, corporate bond market and alternative investment ecosystem so that they complement traditional sources of financing and support India’s journey towards becoming a developed economy by 2047.

Somewhere in a Manchester co-working space, a founder scrolling through the morning business headlines pauses over one figure: $55bn.

That is the sum Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund agreed to pay to take Electronic Arts private, one of the largest buyouts in corporate history. For anyone tracking where serious money is flowing, the message is hard to miss. Entertainment — games, streaming, interactive leisure of every kind — has become one of the most sought-after asset classes on the planet. And where big capital leads, consumer appetite tends to follow.

That appetite has been reshaping how British adults spend their downtime, and the trend extends well beyond consoles and box sets. A growing slice of leisure spending now flows into interactive online entertainment, and among the options UK players explore are non gamstop casinos — internationally licensed sites offering slots, blackjack, roulette and live-dealer tables. These are online casinos not registered with the GamStop scheme, operating under overseas licences, and reviewers tend to compare them on the strength of their bonuses, the breadth of their game libraries and the payment options they support. For UK leisure consumers weighing where to spend an idle evening, understanding how such sites are licensed and how safely they handle deposits and withdrawals has become part of the modern entertainment conversation.

A Buyout That Reveals the Bigger Picture

The EA deal is worth dwelling on because of what it signals rather than what it is. Sovereign wealth funds do not part with tens of billions on a whim. The PIF has spent recent years assembling a portfolio that reads like a map of where global leisure is heading — stakes in games publishers, esports organisations and streaming ventures. Buying EA outright, the studio behind FIFA-era football titles, Battlefield and The Sims, is a statement that interactive entertainment is now core infrastructure for the attention economy.

For UK SME owners, the takeaway is less about the headline number and more about the direction of travel. When the smartest institutional money bets heavily on how people amuse themselves, it tends to validate an entire ecosystem of smaller businesses feeding into that demand: independent studios, payment specialists, marketing agencies and the countless start-ups building tools for a leisure market that shows no sign of cooling.

Why Leisure Spending Keeps Rising

There is a simple logic underpinning the boom. As disposable income shifts and working patterns loosen, adults are carving out more moments for entertainment they can access instantly, on any screen, at any hour. A commuter fires up a mobile game on the train home. A couple settles in for a streaming binge. Someone with a spare twenty minutes spins a few slot reels or joins a live-dealer table from the sofa.

This on-demand quality is precisely what investors find so compelling. Unlike a night at the cinema, digital leisure is not bound by opening hours or geography. The market is enormous, sticky and increasingly frictionless — and that combination is exactly what turned the EA transaction from an ambitious idea into a signed cheque. It also helps explain why Britain’s fintech cluster runs so deep, a strength documented in the government-backed UK FinTech State of the Nation report.

The Money Plumbing Behind the Fun

None of this works without the unglamorous machinery of payments. Every game purchase, every streaming subscription, every deposit into a gaming account depends on money moving quickly and reliably. Britain happens to be exceptionally strong here. The rise of challenger banks reshaped consumer expectations almost overnight, as chronicled in the story of Monzo’s fresh approach under TS Anil. Once people grew used to tapping a phone and seeing a transaction confirmed in seconds, they carried that expectation into every corner of their spending — leisure very much included.

For entrepreneurs, this is where opportunity hides in plain sight. The entertainment surge is not only about content; it is about the rails that carry the cash. Faster, smoother, more transparent transactions have become a competitive edge for any consumer-facing business, and the firms perfecting that plumbing are quietly indispensable to the whole leisure economy.

Britain’s Fintech Advantage

The UK’s position is no accident. The country has built one of the deepest fintech clusters anywhere. That depth matters enormously to the entertainment sector, because the moment a leisure business scales internationally, it needs partners who can handle multiple currencies, instant settlement and airtight security without breaking stride.

Global regulators have been paying attention too. The Bank for International Settlements has examined how technology is rewiring finance in its analysis of the digital transformation of financial services, noting how consumer behaviour and infrastructure now evolve in lockstep. For a British SME serving the leisure market, that alignment is a gift: the tools once reserved for banking giants are increasingly available off the shelf, letting small teams punch far above their weight.

What It All Means for Smaller Businesses

Step back and a pattern emerges. A sovereign fund pays a record sum for a games publisher. UK adults pour more of their evenings into interactive entertainment. Fintech firms make the underlying transactions effortless. Each of these threads reinforces the others, and together they describe a market that favours businesses able to spot where leisure and technology intersect.

For the founder in that co-working space, the EA figure is not just a distant piece of corporate news. It is a signal that the entertainment economy has genuine staying power — and that the smaller businesses supplying it, from payment innovators to content creators, are operating in one of the most resilient corners of the modern market. The giants may grab the headlines, but the real momentum is spread across thousands of nimble enterprises quietly cashing in on how the nation chooses to unwind.

It is unlikely Meta will be the last to emerge with findings of models showing they have, as Prof Woodward puts it, “gone to school” – and learnt our own ways of finding and exploiting gaps in systems.

For some, these episodes point to clear security failures on the part of AI companies leading the charge on this game-changing, era-defining tech.

For others, they are merely another vehicle for tech firms to hype up their powerful models and compete with rivals.

For me, both theories hold some grain of truth.

But in rearing their head one after another, these events have nonetheless spurred fears about AI’s capabilities and where these are headed as developers forge ahead.

And the question inevitably moves to what regulators can and should do next.

Michael Birtwistle, associate director at the Ada Lovelace Institute, makes the point that the UK lacks legal incentives for AI firms to prevent systems from developing capabilities which could pose dangers, and that there are no repercussions if testing protocols fail.

More broadly, Dr Imogen Stead, AI policy manager at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, told the BBC that with opportunities to test frontier AI systems narrowing for many, governments should follow the UK in setting up dedicated institutes for testing.

Improving third-party evaluations with initiatives such as a “trusted tester scheme” for the most risky types of challenges could also be used to limit adverse impacts, she said.

Rather than fear an AI-cyber apocalypse in the meantime, Prof Woodward says, “it’s a case of ‘keep calm and fix stuff’”.

Additional reporting by Philippa Wain and Imran Rahman-Jones

Parish and town councils say plan does ‘virtually nothing to alleviate the real problem of housing affordability for local people’

The Government’s “flawed” target to build almost 19,000 homes in the Cotswolds over the next two decades is opposed by more than a dozen towns and villages.

A joint letter signed by 15 parish and town councils in the Cotswold district opposing the housing target has been sent to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Cotswold District Council is in the process of developing its new local plan which aims to meet the area’s new housing target. Their draft plan suggests 90 per cent of this new housing to be built in ten strategic sites outside the national landscape.

But the letters’ signatories believe the proposed housing plan is undeliverable due to incorrectly defined boundaries, flawed affordability metrics, and severe infrastructure constraints.

They believe the method used to calculate the Cotswold district’s housing requirement is “flawed” and will be “extremely damaging” to the local environment while “doing virtually nothing to alleviate the real problem of housing affordability for local people”.

“We are particularly concerned about the attempt to re-allocate the housing requirement attributable to the roughly 50 per cent of the population living within the 80 per cent of the Cotswold National Landscape area,” the letter reads.

They say new housing development is also constrained by flood risk, water/sewage infrastructure capacity and inadequate roads.

“We also suggest what needs to be done to enable the actual housing affordability issue here to be addressed in a sustainable way,” the letter continues.

The councils are calling on the Government to take onboard their concerns and delay the creation of a new local plan until local government reorganisation takes place in the county.

Councillor Eileen Viviani, who chairs the planning and infrastructure committee at Moreton Town Council said it was an “unutual step” for the parish and town councils to have taken to make their case.

But she explained they are “united in seeking ways to make their communities’ economic and housing needs heard, understood and met”.

Gloucestershire County Council will be merged with the six district authorities to create a new Gloucestershire Council in 2028.

And the town and parish councils, who signed the letter, want the minister to agree that the application of the ‘standard formula’ for housing requirements is inappropriate for Cotswold District in the meantime.

MHCLG has been approached for comment.

The proposed local plan will be considered by district councillors over a series of meetings this month. Subject to approval, another six-week public consultation will run from August 24 to October 5.

The council will then consider the representations received and may recommend additional modifications for the inspector to consider.

The joint letter has been signed by the town councils of Chipping Campden, Fairford, Moreton-in-Marsh, Lechlade and Stow-on-the-Wold.

And parish councils to signed it are Ampney Crucis, Bourton-on-the-Water, Down Ampney, Driffield and Harnhil, Kemble and Ewen, Kempsford, Mickleton, Preston, Quenington, Siddington.

The Manchester-based consumer goods business said revenues totalled £541m for the year to the end of May

Carex and Imperial Leather manufacturer PZ Cussons has reported a rise in sales and profits following cost-cutting measures and increased investment in marketing initiatives.

The Manchester-headquartered consumer goods company said turnover reached £541 million for the year ending May, up 5.8% on a like-for-like basis versus the prior year.

Revenue growth was fuelled primarily by pricing strategies, while sales volumes also climbed marginally.

In the UK, washing and bathing brands Carex, Imperial Leather, Original Source and Sanctuary Spa were propelling growth, especially after a strong Christmas gifting season.

It emphasised brand-building collaborations such as featuring The Gruffalo and Zog animated characters on Carex handwash, and Original Source bodywash sponsoring a London Hyrox event and teaming up with celebrity ambassador Spencer Matthews.

This helped counterbalance a drop in sales for smaller brands such as haircare range Charles Worthington and self-tanning label St Tropez.

PZ Cussons has said its marketing expenditure rose by £3.5 million during the year, representing its highest spend in recent years.

It has also tested live-streaming shopping in markets like Indonesia, while St Tropez was recently introduced on TikTok Shop in the UK.

Meanwhile, the firm said it had streamlined its portfolio over the past year to bolster its balance sheet and concentrate more sharply on its top-performing categories of personal, home and baby care. This encompassed divesting its stake in a Nigerian joint venture, offloading a number of assets across Africa and Asia, shutting its US offices, and closing the Childs Farm office in the UK following its integration into the wider business.

“We have also simplified or streamlined a number of business processes through the use of AI tools and data analytics,” the company said.

The cost-cutting measures helped drive PZ Cussons’s pre-tax profit up to £50 million, representing a 22% year-on-year increase.

Chief executive Jonathan Myers said: “We delivered a strong trading performance in FY26 (the 2026 financial year), with revenue growth across each of our four lead markets and each of our top 10 brands.

“At the same time, we completed our strategic review and established a refreshed strategy with a clearer financial framework and capital allocation policy.”

He described it as a “more focused and resilient business”, adding: “While there is plenty more to do, and we are mindful of macro-economic uncertainties, we are well placed to continue delivering sustainable growth.”

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman warned that New York City’s rent freeze, tax policies and limits on development could worsen the city’s affordability crisis by discouraging construction and investment.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fortune published Wednesday, the Pershing Square Capital Management founder argued that government policy is driving up housing and energy costs in New York.

“The answer isn’t socialism – socialism is a disaster,” Ackman said. “Watch what happens to New York City if [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani succeeds in implementing these plans.”

Ackman said New York’s housing shortage stems in part from rules that make it difficult and costly for developers to build.

BILL ACKMAN SLAMS CALIFORNIA WEALTH TAX AS ‘EXPROPRIATION’ OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

“It’s so high because left-wing mayors have made it very difficult for developers to build here, and Mamdani, by freezing rents, is just going to make the problem worse,” he said.

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted in June to freeze rents on one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments.

Ackman argued that rent controls can shift more costs onto tenants in market-rate units. He also claimed roughly 60,000 apartments have been pulled from the market because landlords cannot recover renovation costs under current regulations.

“If you make it hard to build where people want to live, and you don’t let landlords recover renovation costs, they’ll pull units off the market,” Ackman said.

He pointed to Austin, Texas, as an example of a city where increased construction helped bring rents down.

Ackman also blamed New York’s energy policies for adding to residents’ cost of living.

“Why are energy costs so high in New York State? Because we’ve shut down nuclear power, it takes 15 years to get a pipeline approved, and we’ve banned fracking – so we’re importing natural gas from Pennsylvania,” he said. “That’s just bad policy, and we can fix a lot of it with better policy.”

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Ackman then turned to taxes, arguing that New York should encourage wealthy residents and businesses to invest in the city rather than risk driving them elsewhere.

“You want people like Ken Griffin locating Citadel here – spending $250 million on an apartment, because that purchase makes a building economically viable, which creates construction jobs and brings in wealthy residents who pay taxes,” Ackman said. 

He added, “You don’t want to discourage people like Elon Musk from locating their businesses here.”

Ackman has previously been critical of New York City’s new pied-à-terre surcharge, which applies to certain high-value properties that are not used as an owner’s primary residence.

He also criticized California’s Proposition 40, which could impose a one-time tax equal to 5% of the net worth of billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026. 

“Look at what’s happening in California right now with the wealth tax – they say it’s ‘one time,’ but it’s never one time,” he said.

Ackman also said many Americans have not benefited directly from the wealth generated by the stock market.

STEVE HILTON WARNS CALIFORNIA ECONOMY WILL ‘ABSOLUTELY COLLAPSE’ UNDER ‘INSANE’ BILLIONAIRE TAX

“One of our biggest challenges as a country is that almost half the country isn’t participating in the growth in value created by capitalism – the stock market,” he said.  

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He argued that workers without retirement accounts or stock investments may be less likely to believe that the economic system is working for them.

“Part of that is people feeling left behind – wages can’t compound as quickly as stocks, so everyone needs to participate in the market to believe in capitalism,” he said. 

Mamdani could not immediately be reached by FOX Business for comment.

FOX Business’ Michael Dorgan and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

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