How was your weekend? However bad it may have been, it probably wasn’t quite as bad as Adani CFO Jugeshinder Singh’s who spent his time helping to put together a 413-page rebuttal to Hindenburg’s short report. Even if not completely convincing, he probably deserves a mid-week sick day for the huge effort.

The lowdown

• 🤺 Adani publishes rebuttal to Hindenburg’s report calling it a ‘calculated attack on India’.

• ☔️ Intel loses $8 billion of market value after gloomy forecasts.

• 🚘 Musk may face another SEC probe, this time regarding self-driving car claims.

Flex your finance muscle

FUD

FUD is an acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It's a term commonly used by reddit's army of retail investors and describes a tactic used in financial markets to spread negative or misleading information about a particular asset, with the intention of lowering its price and creating an opportunity for the spreaders of FUD to buy the asset at a discount. Think of it as ‘fake news’ but in an investment context.

Though it is a term that is mainly used among retail investors, the FT argues ($) that Blackstone are effectively accusing the media of sowing FUD when it comes to reporting on the withdrawal dramas that the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust has recently been experiencing. “[The] media has created a different narrative, but the customers are fundamentally happy,” Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray said of BREIT.

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Distressed assets distressed again

In the unlikely event that you are both waiting on delivery of a mattress from Serta Simmons Bedding and getting ready to go on a regional UK holiday with Flybe, I may have some bad news for you.

Serta Simmons has filed for bankruptcy for a second time in an effort to eliminate most of its debt. The mattress maker underwent a restructuring in 2020 that reduced its debt and provided it with fresh capital, but this has not been enough to weather the downturn in the US economy. CFO John Linker said significant amounts of debt maturing in 2023 make the company's capital structure unsustainable.

Similarly, Flybe has cancelled all flights after entering administration yet again ($), after only returning to the air in April 2022 under new owners. The airline could fly again if new owners can be found. So will it be third time lucky for Flybe and Serta Simmons?

The content we're consuming today

• FT: EY Germany to axe hundreds of jobs in post-Wirecard cost-cutting push ($).

• The Economist: How to conduct a sex survey ($).

• WSJ on YouTube: Why Lego Isn’t (Just) a Toy Company.

Off-balance sheet items

• A “bone rush” was created when a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience told the story of some mammoth tusks possibly dumped in New York’s East River. The podcast clip is here, and the NY Times covers the subsequent attempts to find the bones here ($). 

The bottom line