TL;DR More than 15 UK dealership group acquisitions by overseas buyers have completed since 2022, according to Savills, led by US groups Lithia and Group 1 and Canada’s Global Auto Holdings. Constellation, controlled through TDR Capital, holds 19.15% of Vertu Motors, up from 11.02%. The threshold was crossed on 29 May 2026. No bid has been announced. One adviser calls M&A as difficult as it has been in 10 years, with Chinese brands creating uncertainty over which manufacturer

TL;DR A salary sacrifice EV scheme lets an employee swap gross salary for a leased electric car, with tax and National Insurance worked out on the lower pay. The BiK rate for electric vehicles is 4% in 2026/27, rising to 9% by 2029/30, against up to 37% for petrol and diesel. The BVRLA reports salary sacrifice as the fastest-growing part of UK leasing, up 123% year on year, though part of that reflects better data categorisation. EV salary sacrifice came through the November

Consumer Duty automotive finance obligations have moved well past the "embed it and evidence it" advice the FCA gave back in 2023. By 2026, the regulator has a live market study behind it, updated good-and-poor-practice guidance, and a genuine habit of naming specific pricing failures in adjacent credit markets rather than just issuing broad warnings. This piece works through what Consumer Duty actually requires of automotive lenders, why it doesn't behave like a normal compl

This is a collaboration with SOFICO. An independent analysis by Paul Bennett, Managing Partner, Madox Square LLP; Senior Advisor at Genpact Banking & Capital Markets European leasing is not slowing down. According to Leaseurope, total new leasing volumes across Europe now sit at roughly €454 billion, with the automotive sector accounting for around €338 billion of that figure. Passenger car leasing grew 4.4% year on year, commercial vehicle leasing 5.7%. By any measure, this

The motor finance redress scheme isn't a hypothetical anymore, and it hasn't been for a while. On 30 March 2026, the FCA published Policy Statement PS26/3, and with it came a confirmed price tag: roughly £7.5 billion in redress, £9.1 billion once implementation costs get added on top, spread across an estimated 12.1 million eligible agreements. That figure actually came in lower than the FCA's own earlier consultation estimate, but it's still, by the regulator's own descripti

Automotive retail and financial services have basically become the same business. The finance offer at the point of sale isn't a back-office function anymore. For most buyers, it's the actual product, and for a dealer group or lender eyeing a new automotive finance market, the finance infrastructure often decides the opportunity long before the vehicles do. That changes what "entering a new market" actually means. It's not just a commercial expansion call anymore. It's a regu

Every automotive or mobility business that has tried to expand into a new European market has learned the same lesson eventually: the strategy that worked at home rarely survives contact with a new market untouched. The distribution norms are different. The regulatory timeline is different. Even the way customers expect to buy a car can differ from one border to the next, and that gap has only widened as electrification and subscription-style ownership models reshape what "bu