It's nearly Halloween and the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are scaring markets with monetary policy. The Fed is lowering the value of your new house by smattering it with interest rate rises and the BoE will be leaving a burning paper bag of dog shit on pension funds’ doorsteps on 14 October when it stops buying bonds. You should’ve said ‘treat’.

The lowdown

• 💸 Private equity giant CVC has renewed plans to go public. ($)

• 😬 Fed meeting minutes show it is fearful of doing too little to fight inflation.

• 🥗 Weight loss app Noom’s CFO resigns as workforce is cut and starts new role at Trip Advisor.

Featured stories

Lego building edtech empire

Kirkbi, the family company that owns 75% of Lego, is acquiring US-based edtech company Brainpop for $875 million. Brainpop produces short animations used in schools on subjects including science, math and social studies. In preparation for this post, I watched a 5-minute video in which a child is taught about the concept of ethics through lawn mowing.

The acquisition fits neatly with Lego’s values of learning through play, but also represents a further push into the market for formal education.

Lego also hopes that the acquisition will allow it to sell more Brainpop subscriptions directly to consumers ($) rather than to schools.

Edtech sold in this manner can be problematic though. Earlier this year, revelations about boiler room tactics ($) used by former edtech darling Byju when selling directly to parents came to light. These included salespeople using lines such as, “Don’t you want to give your child a good education?”. Perhaps someone should share the Brainpop video with Byju.

The content we're consuming today

• Fortune: CFOs at Block, Meta, Workday, Nordstrom, and Estée Lauder explain how their roles are evolving

Off-balance sheet items

• This blog by crypto sceptic Molly White: Web 3 is going just great… and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.

The bottom line