I received a $55 dollar parking fine last week. What’s annoying is that the park was so small that I had to climb out the passenger side of the car to exit and it is very hard to look cool while doing this. The fine stuck to the car when I returned just added insult to injury. BUT I don’t feel so bad now after seeing Jack Ma’s Ant Group cop a $1 billion fine and US-based biotech Illumina receive a $476 million fine.

The lowdown

• 🧬 Genetic testing company Illumina receives a $476 million fine for completing Grail acquisition, the maximum regulators can levy.

• 🤖 Elon Musk launches rival to ChatGPT creator OpenAI called ‘xAI’.

• 📉 US inflation down to 3% in June, slightly lower than expectations.

• ⏳ Disney extend CEO Bob Iger’s contract to 2026, giving him more time to find a successor.

Flex your finance muscle

Erdoganomics

Turkey is grappling with an inflation rate of just under 40%. Unlike the US where the Fed is hiking interest rates in an attempt to curtail inflation, Turkey is doing the opposite and LOWERING interest rates.

Lowering rates has led to problems purchasing everyday necessities for the public and has caused the Turkish lira to hit new lows against the dollar.

This economic turmoil has unfolded under the supervision of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hence the term ‘Erdoganomics’. And apparently the economic theory is spreading ($).

Featured story

Hipgnosis investors ask the company to sell song rights and buy back shares

Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF), which owns rights to music by various artists, has seen its stock price fall drastically, prompting investors to suggest selling off some catalogs and buying back shares ($) to shore up the stock price.

HSF floated on the LSE in 2018. HSF's shares are trading at less than half of the company's portfolio which they value at $2.2 billion.

HSF uses song copyrights to generate consistent cash flow, but for the moment has stopped buying rights due to the falling share price and the inability to raise cash for purchases without diluting existing shareholders ($).

The idea was to transform music into a reliable asset class and, despite the share price struggles, royalty revenue from HSF's songs for FY22 rose by approximately four per cent to $121 million.

The content we're consuming today

• WSJ: How a Houston Oilman Confounded Climate Activists and Made Billions ($).

• Bloomberg: Big Tech’s Dominance in Stock Market Hits Breakpoint for Nasdaq 100 ($).

• Institutional Investor: Short Selling Just Hit $1 Trillion.

Off-balance sheet items

• Taylor Swift is very business savvy and fellow fans would know that Taylor is in the process of rerecording her first six albums in order to ‘reclaim’ ownership of the recordings. A number of other musicians are now following suit.

The bottom line