🦑 🖥️ 💸 Netflix reckons its latest megahit, Squid Game, will earn it $900m, according to figures seen by Bloomberg. Unlike movie studios and TV networks, the streaming giant doesn’t log sales based on specific films or programmes – its monthly subscribers are lured in by a vast catalogue of content. But it has a wealth of data about what customers watch, which analysts use to work out the value it gets from individual shows. Squid Game – about indebted Koreans in a deadly contest for cash prizes – hits the sweet spot of being both popular and cheap. It cost $21.4m to make, meaning Netflix is anticipating a 42x return on investment.
Gold loses its glister
🥇👎👍 Investors are dumping gold and buying cryptocurrencies, upending the precious metal’s historic status as financiers’ favourite hedge against rising inflation. More than $10bn has been taken out of the biggest gold exchange traded fund this year, while funds have also been selling down their physical bullion hoards – driving the price of gold down by 6.1%. Bitcoin has more than doubled in value over the same period, hitting a record high of more than $67,000 this week. Many investors have come to see cryptocurrencies as a sound inflation hedge, although there’s little evidence to back that up – none of them existed during the world’s last bout of serious inflation in the 1970s.
Credit Suisse’s fishy tuna bonds
🇨🇭🎣 🇲🇿 Credit Suisse will fork out $475m in fines and cancel $200m worth of debt owed by Mozambique as punishment for its role in the long-running “tuna bonds” scandal. Between 2012 and 2016 the Swiss bank made $1.3bn of loans to Mozambiquan companies, ostensibly to set up tuna fishing fleets. The bankers paid kickbacks of about $200m to officials so the loans would have “state guarantees” – without the knowledge of Mozambique’s parliament. When the companies later defaulted, what was once one of Africa’s fastest-rising economies was plunged into years of financial turmoil. The fines were agreed as part of a co-ordinated settlement with regulators from the US, the UK and Switzerland.