• Bluestones Group has acquired Preston-based legal recruitment specialist Clayton Legal, the seventh brand acquisition this calendar year. Clayton Legal will continue to operate as a standalone business, building on its brand, candidate and client relationships developed over years on the legal sector, according to the company statement.

• HR and payroll software provider Ciphr has acquired Shape, a cloud-based payroll platform used by 1,500 UK businesses. The acquisition will accelerate the development of Ciphr’s payroll technology and help ensure that Ciphr can deliver a better experience for its new and existing payroll customers and people. Shape’s founders, husband and wife team Alex and Cheri Bartlett, and the rest of their team, will also join Ciphr.

• League One football club Leyton Orient has renewed its partnership with Pertemps Network Group as its talent attraction partner for another season. Since the partnership began in the 2023/24 season, Leyton Orient and Pertemps have collaborated to streamline the club’s recruitment processes, ensuring a robust talent pipeline to meet the team’s business needs.

• Talent firm Randstad NV has announced that Randstad Digital has acquired Torc, an AI-powered talent marketplace platform with more than 25,000 digital talent enrolled worldwide, with a specific current emphasis on Latin America (LATAM), the US and India. Torc, with its AI-driven platform, enables skill-based matching to connect digital talent to clients globally. According to the company statement, the acquisition allows Randstad Digital, a digital enablement company, to further accelerate clients’ access to digital talent, including global delivery centres, to meet its digital ambitions across cloud, data, digital engineering and customer experience capabilities.