With all the turmoil on Earth right now, it's time to come up with an escape plan. The Twitter deal seems to be delaying our favourite billionaire Elon’s plans to colonise Mars, but I guess we could settle for the metaverse with Zuckerberg? Maybe once the avatars have legs.

The lowdown

• 🥩 Beyond Meat appoints new CFO as stock continues descent.

• 🕹 Despite video game industry slowdown, Roblox reports that active users increased 23% year on year.

• 🏡 Credit Suisse reaches agreement with regulators, paying $495 million to settle a case related to mortgage-backed securities.

Featured stories

‘Nasdaq whale’ sells stake in THG

SoftBank has dumped its holdings of UK ecommerce company THG, resulting in a £450 million loss for the group. The stake was held by SoftBank’s trading unit SB Northstar, also known as the ‘Nasdaq whale’.

The unit was given this name after taking in great gulps of derivatives in public market tech companies – specifically, call options which allowed it to buy the tech stocks at a specified price up until a future date. The banks on the other side of the options trade were forced to buy the stocks to hedge their risk, leading to a tech rally.

The bloated whale has long since washed ashore, though, and is now being shut down, after racking up close to $6 billion in losses ($). The dumping of the THG stake is merely the latest attempt to scavenge something from the carcass.

But even this loss looks small when compared with the $50 billion that SoftBank’s Vision Fund lost in the six months to June. There is always a bigger fish. (We are aware that whales are not technically fish. Please do not write in.)

The content we're consuming today

• Deloitte: The Deloitte CFO Survey Q3 2022 – The credit squeeze is here.

• The Australian Financial Review: Zuckerberg’s metaverse looks like a colossal fail

Off-balance sheet items

• The Economist: It is time to legalise cocaine.

The bottom line