RICS' new service charge residential management code came into effect on 7 April 2026. It provides, amongst other things, guidance for landlords and managing agents on key provisions in the Building Safety Act 2022.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has just published a consultation paper (Consultation Paper 26/14: Changes to the information flows for UK equity IPOs) on removing rules which require a mandatory waiting period between the publication of an IPO prospectus or registration document, and the release of pre-deal investment research by syndicate bank analysts.

A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry 

Now is the time to prepare and submit annual returns in respect of any employee share plan or management incentive arrangement you had in place during the 2025/26 tax year. 

On 21 April 2026, the Council of the European Union gave final approval to a new Directive on combating corruption (the "Directive"). This is a significant move to harmonise the current patchwork of legislation across the EU Member States that applies at present, given that EU measures to date have been high level and directional rather than prescriptive. The Directive will result in a single, harmonised set of criminal offences based on unified definitions, penalties and prevention measures applicable across the public and private sectors, though individual Member States can still choose to go further than required by the Directive.

We recently saw two of the largest DeFi exploits of 2026 within just 18 days: the approximately US$285 million breach of the Drift Protocol on Solana on 1 April^[1] and the approximately US$292 million exploit from Kelp DAO on 18 April^[2]. While the attack methods differed, a common theme was that neither were "hacks" in the straightforward sense of exploits of computer code; rather each attack exploited points of weakness within the governance structures around each DeFi application.  

The world of environmental product legislation is not immune to the regulatory uncertainty that has been a defining feature of the sustainability landscape over the past few years. While the direction of travel in the EU remains clear—towards greater digitalisation, harmonisation and circularity—the sheer volume and pace of legislative activity demands close attention from any business placing products on the European market.

It is common, if not trite, to say that the pace of change in the cryptoassets field is very rapid, but on the UK regulatory front, April 2026 has surely brought us "peak pace": on 15 April 2026, the FCA published CP26/13, including draft guidance on the regulatory perimeter (referred to as "New PERG"), one of the last pieces of the jigsaw for firms pulling together their plans to enter (or not) the UK's cryptoassets regulatory system. Just six days later, His Majesty's Treasury (HMT) published details of a package of amendments to its earlier  legislation establishing the perimeter.