Steve Monnington, CEO of Mayfield Merger Strategies reviews M&A activity in 2025 and profiles the founder team behind one of this year’s acquisitions.
M&A – 2025 in review
Since my last column, there have been five exhibition transactions, bringing total deal activity for 2025 to 65 transactions (36 different buyers), compared to 63 transactions (42 different buyers) in 2024. This represents the highest number of acquisitions since COVID-19, with more deals set to close before the end of the year.
There has been a shift towards transactions in the U.S throughout the year. If we look at the geographical analysis for the transactions so far this year compared to previous years, we can see this – and it’s predominantly driven by UK-based organisers acquiring US events, with most run by US organisers but several created by UK-based organisers.
The five most acquisitive organisers in 2025 are all private equity-owned (we consider Emerald to be PE-owned, even though it is listed on the NYSE, as PE firm ONEX owns more than 90% of the shares).
Emerald – five acquisitions – three across U.S & Canada and two in the UK (This is Beyond and Insurtech Insights)
CloserStill Media – five acquisitions, including three in the US (AI4, Billington Cyber Security and PARCEL Forum).
EasyFairs – five acquisitions spread across the UK (Chem UK and Digital Accountancy Show), Sweden, Switzerland and its first US acquisition (Energy Projects Conference & Expo)
Nineteen Group – five acquisitions so far, including four in the UK (Payments Association, Commercial Vehicles Show, National Painting and Decorating Show and Plantworx). We say “so far” because we expect a flurry of US acquisitions before the end of the year.
Hyve – four acquisitions – all in the US (Manifest, Behavioural Health Tech, GSV Summit and HGAN)
Entrepreneurs who have made money developing and selling their own businesses are now backing the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Events Venture Group invested in three businesses in 2025 (Deep Tech Momentum, Stablecon and Explori), Manta Media Capital set up by Toby Duckworth (ex 121 Partners) with Douglas Emslie investing alongside will debut in 2026 offering both finance and management to event startups, while Charlie Kerr plans to invest some of the money from the recent sale of With Intelligence in taking minority shareholdings in post-startup B2B companies.
The Entrepreneurs journey: Jimmy Vestbirk & Beth Fellner – Legal Geek
In October this year, Law Business Research (LBR) acquired the Legal Geek portfolio of legal-tech events, marking the latest chapter in one of the sector’s most distinctive community-led success stories.
Founded by Jimmy Vestbirk in 2015, Legal Geek has grown into a globally recognised brand running four events: the flagship Legal Geek Conference in London, Legal Geek Growth for SME law firms, Legal Geek North America in Chicago, and Legal Geek Europe in Amsterdam.
I caught up with Vestbirk and his co-director, Beth Fellner, to trace the journey from inception to acquisition.
Vestbirk’s path into events was anything but conventional. In his twenties he ran a series of small businesses—from festival catering to online marketing—but his ambition was to launch a legal-tech startup, not a conference series.
Time spent in San Francisco, networking with lawyers and immersing himself in the early legal-tech scene, sparked the idea for Flex Legal, an on-demand paralegal service he co-founded, which was later sold to Mishcon de Reya.
At the same time, the informal meet-up group he had created was expanding rapidly. What began as a handful of 30-strong gatherings ballooned into a community of several thousand.
That momentum convinced him to try a full-scale conference. He felt existing legal events were too traditional, too formal and too dull. Instead, he drew inspiration from the new generation of tech conferences such as The Next Web and Websummit. The goal was to build an event that felt energetic, informal and community-driven.
His lack of events experience, Vestbirk says, became an advantage: “I didn’t have a template. I chose a full dry-hire venue with specific production needs—The Old Truman Brewery, because I wanted to stand apart from generic conference centres. I was often the best-connected but worst-paid person in the room. I even got mistaken for a courier when turning up to meet senior partners.” That outsider energy became part of the Legal Geek identity.
Fellner joined the business five years later in 2019 , after Vestbirk’s first US event made it clear the operation needed to professionalise. Soon after, COVID hit. In hindsight, they now view the pandemic years as a pivotal advantage. As a small, tech-savvy team, they were able to nurture and grow their community online, ensuring that when live events returned, Legal Geek emerged stronger and with deeper engagement than many competitors.
For many founders, the idea of selling comes late in the journey. For Vestbirk, it was part of the plan from the beginning.
A seminar run by Mayfield on how to sell your business planted the seed, and as Legal Geek grew, buyers began to approach. Among them was American Lawyer Media (ALM), which the founders considered one of the most logical strategic acquirers. But discussions paused when ALM itself was acquired by LBR.
Legal Geek then reconnected with ALM under its new ownership of LBR, and the deal was agreed quickly—signed just ahead of this year’s flagship London conference.
Looking back, Vestbirk and Fellner say they might have pushed growth harder and invested earlier, but they recognise that LBR was attracted precisely because significant growth potential remained.
With LBR’s existing platforms—news, awards and global reach—Legal Geek’s events can now scale faster, expand geographically and launch new community-led formats with far greater resources than before.
Recent Transactions
There have been five transactions announced since my last column.
| Buyer/Investor | Business | Sector | Country |
| Easyfairs | Energy Projects Conference & Expo | Energy | USA |
| Fairfest Media | WTE Miami | Travel | USA |
| Site News | Actual Media | Environmental | Canada |
| Tekpon | The Next Web | Tech | Netherlands |
| Nineteen Group | Plantworx | Construction | UK |