7:02am. Coffee in hand, I open the FT to find that half the global IPO pipeline has evaporated overnight because everyone is apparently waiting for one very patient AI company to decide it's ready for its close-up in November. Meanwhile, I have three completions this week and a verification call in forty minutes for a deal that is, as far as I'm aware, still happening.

9:15am. Client calls to ask whether we should "maybe just wait and see what Anthropic does." I explain, gently, that our issuer is a small-cap industrials business, not a trillion-dollar large language model, and that the markets are unlikely to confuse the two. He is not reassured.

11:40am. Banker on the other deal mentions, apropos of nothing, that "the Vix is low, so now's the time." I resist the urge to ask whether he's read the same article I have, which notes that bankers always say that right before the deal gets pushed to 2027.

2:00pm. Spend twenty minutes drafting a risk factor about AI sector sentiment for a prospectus belonging to a company that manufactures industrial fasteners. It has nothing to do with AI. I include it anyway, because apparently now even bolts are exposed to "data centre opposition risk."

4:30pm. Someone on the deal team asks, only half joking, whether we should rename our client "Anthropic-adjacent Holdings Ltd" to catch some of the froth. I decline, citing both professional embarrassment and the Takeover Code, though mostly the former.

6:45pm. All three completions still on track. Conditions satisfied, signatures chased, nobody mentions data centres again. Small mercies. Home by eight, blissfully un-pushed into next year.

We are a team of M&A and ECM lawyers in a full service firm operating in the mid-market. I would be delighted to discuss corporate opportunities so feel free to contact me at daniel.bellau@edwincoe.com