Welcome to the sixteenth edition of The Weekly Briefing!
Each week, we recap the most interesting commercial news stories shaping the market, from corporate dealmaking to regulatory shifts, and highlight why they matter to businesses and law firms.
Our aim remains the same: sharpen commercial fluency while keeping an eye on the legal angles behind the headlines.
UAE Officially Exits OPEC
The United Arab Emirates has left OPEC and OPEC+, ending nearly six decades of membership in the oil cartel.
To understand why this matters, you need to understand what OPEC actually is. Think of it less as a trade body and more as a group of countries that agreed to act as a single seller. By coordinating how much oil each member produces, they control global supply and when supply is controlled, so is the price. The UAE has been sitting on far more oil than its quota allows it to extract, effectively leaving money in the ground.
So why leave now?
Ongoing tensions involving Iran, pressure on key shipping routes, and the long-term shift away from fossil fuels have created a narrow window. Oil is a finite resource, and both the UAE and Saudi Arabia know it. The race to extract, sell, and reinvest revenue into infrastructure, real estate, and technology, before the energy transition closes the door, is well underway.
By leaving, the UAE can now produce at full capacity. More supply typically means lower prices per barrel, which puts pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia that are currently relying on elevated oil revenues to fund that very diversification. Whilst the UAE could undercut the market and still turn a large profit due to how much oil they have left on the table for OPEC,
For law firms, cheaper oil tends to reduce costs across industries, free up capital and trigger M&A activity, particularly in energy and infrastructure. If oil prices drop, expect transactional teams to get busy.
Does Click-and-Collect Count as a Sale?
A lease dated 1979 is now at the centre of a High Court dispute, and the outcome could change how commercial property deals are structured for years to come.
Hammerson, the owner of Brent Cross Shopping Centre, is suing John Lewis & Partners over a turnover rent clause. Here is how those work: instead of paying a fixed rent, tenants pay a base amount plus a percentage of their revenue once it hits a certain threshold. It was designed so landlords could take a cut when their tenants did well.
Hammerson argues that click-and-collect orders bought online and picked up in store should count towards John Lewis’s revenue figure. John Lewis disagrees. Its position is that the sale is completed when the goods leave the warehouse. By the time a customer walks in to collect, the transaction is already done.
The actual story here is about leverage. For decades, anchor tenants like John Lewis had all the power. Their presence drew shoppers into the shopping centre, benefiting every other retailer there, so landlords gave them generous terms. Turnover rent was how landlords got a slice of the upside. But that model was built for a world before online shopping existed.
Now, landlords are taking pre-internet contracts to court and asking judges to interpret them for a world no one anticipated. Whatever the court decides, real estate lawyers and their clients will be rewriting leases accordingly.
Skadden and Kirkland Lead on €29bn Elevator Merger
Two elevator giants are merging. KONE, the Finnish tech leader in the space, is acquiring TK Elevator, the German company that has the infrastructure installed in elevators, the service contracts, and the client relationships built over decades. On paper, the deal makes sense. KONE brings the brains, TKE brings the muscle. As cities grow taller and buildings get smarter, the demand for next-generation elevator technology is only going one way.
What makes this deal interesting beyond the headline number is where TKE came from. Less than five years ago, it was carved out of German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp by private equity firms Advent and Cinven. They paid €17.2 billion. They are now selling for €29.4 billion. That is the private equity playbook in one clean example: buy, build, flip.
The deal still needs to get through regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU’s new merger guidelines are moving in a direction that actively supports large European companies consolidating to compete globally. The thinking is simple: if Europe wants to produce world-class companies that can take on American and Chinese rivals, blocking mergers like this one is counterproductive. This deal could sail through smoother than people expect.
On the US side, the FTC would also need to sign off. But with their attention firmly on Big Tech, an industrial merger between two European companies is unlikely to be top of their agenda.
Skadden advised KONE. Kirkland & Ellis, the go-to firm for private equity, acted for Advent and Cinven on the sell side.