Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 51 seconds.

Yesterday, economists at the WEF got gloomy over recession, Big 4 companies worked their juniors to the bone, and US drugmakers called the UK anti-innovation. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• ECB officials said that core inflation (the more sticky, important brother of normal inflation) remains too high to justify cutting rates soon.

• Markets didn't care about this at all, with both US and European markets ticking up slightly, largely driven by gains in real estate.

• India's anger toward index providers seems to be growing, and they're moving to tighten controls on them. `💀

Story Roundup

1 - Economists reckon that a recession is gonna be storming us. 🌀

The World Economic Forum hosts this meeting in a small town called Davos.

Town is small, but the people are big. Corporate and political leaders of all sorts fly out to talk about the way the world is headed.

In short - they think it's not looking good.

Outlook for the global economy is gloomy at best with a very strong chance of recession.

Soaring food costs are gonna hurt low-income countries disproportionately, and policymakers are gonna have some difficult trade-offs to consider.

And in the end, they lived sadly ever after. 😳

2 - Big 4 get under fire for working their juniors hard. 😬

Spain's labour ministry is concerned with compliance - more specifically, the number of hours that juniors are working.

They'll be hitting arms of the Big 4 with surprise inspections to check on employee health and general vibes. 💀

Working hours can get pretty punishing - stretching up to 95-100 hours a week when dealmaking is hot and money is flowing.

The Big 4 generate total revenues of $700m+ in Spain.

But the cops have made it clear. "No matter how big the company, it is never beyond the law."

Guess the law's got some long arms.

3 - US drugmakers say NO to the NHS. 👎🏼

Big Pharma thinks that they can't milk the UK consumer as well with the NHS keeping watch.

AbbVie and Eli Lilly have pulled out of a pricing agreement with the NHS and they're pretty pissed about the state of things.

They owe the government $3.7 billion - coming to around 26.5% of UK sales.

Officials from both companies called the UK "anti-innovation" and they reckon that forcing lower prices is a horrible thing to do.

The industrial revolution and it's consequences... 🤔

4 - Dunzo gears up to cut costs. ✂️

The high-fliers of 2021 are the laggards of today.

Dunzo is making a big push to cut costs, and it looks like layoffs are here.

They've begun to cut jobs at their company (3% of employees, which is an impressively small number to me) and start to restructure.

Dunzo's business is 15-minute delivery - which is as 2021 as you can get.

They had actually planned for an IPO this year, but they now want to let their quick commerce business "mature".

Sign of the times, I guess. 🤣

5 - Italy's top mafia boss gets locked up. 🤦🏼

One of Italy's biggest businesses is the mafia.

I'm not joking.

The mafia does a combined $130 billion in revenue and about $70 billion in profit from Italy every year.

Those are insane numbers. You could list the business on the Nasdaq, ticker $MFIA.

And the dude that heads the biggest mafia organisation just got caught by the cops.

Messina Denaro was the last of Sicily's Cosa Nostra bosses, and he's probably looking at a long jail sentence.

The Godfather. ☠️

Hope you enjoyed this issue of the Market Munch. If you've got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

Aryaansh