Retail and e-commerce startups, funding rounds, founder stories, and business strategy.
Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have offered more than $53 billion, or $60.50 a share, to buy PayPal. The unsolicited bid marks one of the largest deals in payments history and faces steep antitrust hurdles.
French underwear brand Le Slip Français listed on Euronext Growth Paris on Bastille Day at 14.80 euros a share. The micro-cap listing is a bet that made-in-France apparel can win as Shein and Temu face tougher EU rules.
Moneybox is running a secondary share sale of up to 45 million pounds that values the fintech at about 800 million pounds. The deal uses London’s new Pisces private-securities market to give long-serving employees liquidity without an IPO.
The June cluster of Nuvei-Payoneer and Deluxe-Celero deals signals that another $1bn+ cross-border payments acquisition is likely before the end of 2026. Here are the three signals and what could still delay it.
EasyJet’s board has thrown its weight behind a £5.7 billion ($7.7 billion) take-private led by Apollo Global Management, dropping its earlier support for a rival bid from Castlelake. The switch sets an August 7 deadline for Apollo to firm up its offer for Europe’s second-largest low-cost carrier.
Shein’s Hong Kong listing likely prices at or below roughly $40bn, a discount of about 60% to its 2022 peak, most plausibly in H2 2026. Three signals from June and July, across capital markets, trade policy and consumer regulation, point the same way.
New payments-native leaders at Fiserv, Nuvei and Adyen point to a fresh round of merchant-payments portfolio reshaping. At least one more top-tier acquirer is likely to announce a carve-out or software deal before year-end 2026.
CK Hutchison has confirmed talks to sell Marionnaud, the roughly 700-store European perfumery chain owned by AS Watson, to BEHN, the investment vehicle of Groupe Bogart shareholder David Konckier. The move would end more than 20 years of ownership and hand a marquee prestige-beauty asset to a fast-consolidating French perfumery group.
Mobile World Investment Corporation has spun off its electronics chain Dien May Xanh in an IPO that raised about 505 million dollars. The 93 percent-subscribed offering values the retailer near 3.4 billion dollars ahead of an August debut on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.
Signals point to a recommerce consolidation wave in H2 2026, with electronics as the next contested resale vertical. The eBay-Depop deal likely closes by the end of Q3, with further moves expected before year-end.