A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry 

Travers Smith LLP has advised Tomoro on its acquisition by OpenAI in connection with OpenAI's newly launched OpenAI Deployment Company.

Travers Smith LLP has advised Bridgepoint on its co-investment alongside ECI Partners in Helio Intelligence, Europe’s leading provider of AI-enabled political intelligence and public affairs monitoring services.

The EU AI Act is one of the most significant pieces of technology regulation to emerge in recent years and it is still taking shape. In May 2026 alone, the EU provisionally agreed material changes through the Digital Omnibus on AI (see our previous briefing on the "AI Omnibus"), postponing key compliance deadlines, and published draft guidance on high-risk system classification and transparency requirements.

At the beginning of this year, the Government published draft legislation to reform leasehold and to mandate the use of the commonhold tenure for new flats, as explored in an earlier briefing.  It also asked the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee to interrogate its proposals in order to suggest some improvements. The Committee published its report on 27 May 2026.  This proposes some changes to the leasehold reform provisions in the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, and also puts forward several recommendations about reinvigorating commonhold, which are discussed below:

Many businesses make loans as part of their employee incentive arrangements typically to fund the purchase of shares in the company by employees or the trustees of an employee benefit trust.  These loans are often on relatively "soft" terms which can give rise to corresponding benefit in kind tax charges where the recipient is an employee or director.  If the company making the loan is a "close" company for tax purposes and the recipient is a "participator" (which includes shareholders and those entitled to acquire shares) an additional tax charge can arise for the company.  Under proposals set out in a current government consultation, on top of these considerations, close companies will have to comply with additional reporting obligations in respect of transactions with participators to avoid penalties.

Whatever the strategy, the judgement and experience of your investment team is the key to success. And, in launching the sovereign AI fund – a £500m venture capital fund – the UK government seems to have got that right.

This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law.

By James Bell and Sarah Lauder

The Upper Tribunal ("UT") dismisses appeals of two companies against the decision of the First-tier tribunal ("FTT") to uphold HMRC's denial of Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax relief to investor shareholders.

HMRC confirms that they will appeal against the First-tier Tax Tribunal's decision that the reduced rate of UK value added tax can apply to the supply of electricity from public electric vehicle charging points.

A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry. 

A new Energy Independence Bill was announced in the King's Speech yesterday. However, the speech (and earlier references to this Bill, for example in the Labour Manifesto) gives us little to go on beyond the words 'energy' and 'independence' – already themselves very much the buzz words of the administration of late, particularly in the wake of recent events in Iran.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is currently consulting on improving the proportionality of the building control process for works to existing higher-risk buildings. The deadline for responses is 28 May 2026 and we would welcome any views before then.