It’s the first day of February and the good news is that free article limits on your favorite news sites may have reset. So, when you see the ($) in today’s newsletter, you can probably disregard it. But choose wisely. There is, however, some bad news: the Fed is meeting today and so rates are probably going up.

The lowdown

• 🩳 Adani completes $2.5 billion share sale despite short-seller attack.

• 📈 Exxon reports $56 billion profit in monster year for oil majors.

• 📉 Norway’s sovereign wealth fund loses $164 billion in ‘very unusual’ year.

Featured Stories

Spotify ambition leads to losses

Spotify investors are not going to like their ‘Discover Weekly’ this week. Spotify's Q4 losses rose to €270 million, up from €39 million the previous corresponding period, due to a pandemic-driven hiring spree that caused operating costs to increase by 44%. Like many tech companies, CEO Daniel Ek admitted that they were "too ambitious" during the pandemic – it has since laid off 6% of its workforce.

For 2022, the company reported a net loss of €430 million on €11.7 billion in revenue. Spotify has struggled to become profitable, despite its large user base and has invested heavily in podcasting to offset its financial challenges. One of its largest investments was an exclusive 3.5-year deal with the Joe Rogan Experience – possibly the world’s most popular podcast – for a reported $200 million ($).

Before starting the ‘Sad Songs’ playlist, the company did add 10 million new subscribers in Q4, taking its paid subscriber count to 205 million and overall users to 489 million. Not all bad.

The content we're consuming today

• Bloomberg: A Bet on a Busted Airline Is Poised for a $100 Million Payoff ($).

• FT: How First Abu Dhabi Bank pursued Standard Chartered and ‘opened Pandora’s box’ ($).

• FT on YouTube: How the buyout of Morrisons turned into a costly blunder.

Off-balance sheet items

• After 54 years of production, the last Boeing 747 has now been delivered. (Sort of anyway, the new Air Force One is a 747 and is a little late.) The iconic plane has so far transported around 6 billion people, but all good things must come to an end.

The bottom line