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 53 seconds.

That's less time than it takes for global law firms to slow their hiring down, Hong Kong to put crypto in the crosshairs, and Paytm's wounds to start bleeding again. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Markets stayed flat as traders remained content with a lack of market moving news.

• The Bank of England basically told lenders to do more to prevent market turmoil. 💀

• UK's aluminum factories are facing closure due to high taxes. 🪙

Story Roundup

1 - Global law firms hit the brakes on hiring. ⚖️

Belts are getting tighter at Wall Street.

Global law firms have started cutting back on hiring because of a slowdown in dealmaking and a surge in costs.

Lawyers make a lot of money when businesses make deals. They take a hefty slice of the pie in the middle - which is why their bottom lines are hurt the most when the pie shrinks.

Overall number of billable hours declined by less than 1 percent, but expenses went up by 11% and overheads by 13%.

Firms are under some strong pressure to bring costs under control by halting hiring - with the legal sector losing over 13k jobs in September.

Harvey Specter is in a bit of a pickle. 🤵

2 - Hong Kong puts crypto ETFs on the radar again. 💰

Hong Kong's warming up to crypto.

Their regulators are set to allow the launch of ETFs tracking crypto for retail investors.

Offerings are gonna start with Bitcoin, but could be expanded later.

It's a pretty big pivot for them after they called crypto the "elephant in the room" and restricted access to digital assets for Hong Kong based investors.

Trading houses nearby have said that a move like this could "help Hong Kong restore it's status as a finance hub".

I'm not sure about finance hub, but degen hub, surely.

Brb, booking a ticket to Hong Kong.😏

3 - PayTM's woes widen with their losses. 📉

PayTm's investors got quite the mixed bag yesterday.

They dropped 3Q earnings, and losses widened but revenue surged.

Consolidated top-line clocked a 76% jump, driven by an increase in merchant subscriptions and growth in actual bill payments.

Their losses also widened though, growing 21% from the last quarter to $70mn.

GMV is also marginally higher as the Indian economy opens up and offline merchant numbers increase.

Yesterday also marked 1 year since Paytm went public, and if you bought stock back then, you'd have lost about 60% of your money.

How about "let's only invest in companies that have made a profit in their lifetime". 🤔

4 - We might walk alone. ⚽

Liverpool might be getting flipped for a hefty profit.

Liverpool, the football club.

Their owner Fenway Sports Group is in the early stages of exploring a sale.

They contacted both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley after being approached by a buyer for an undisclosed amount.

Ever since FSG took over Liverpool, they snapped a drought of silverware.

The Reds managed to return to the very top of Premier League football, and reached the finals of the Champions League thrice - they even won one of those encounters.

Forbes values Liverpool at $4.45bn - which would mean a big, big profit for FSG, who bought them for $300m in 2010.

5 - A Sheikh takes a $2 billion pot to the private credit table. 💸

An Abu Dhabi based royal is seeing the fruits that could be reaped from private credit.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed just closed a $2 billion fund to deploy loans to companies.

These loans will all be senior-secured, which means that the lender is gonna be the first one paid back in case of a bankruptcy.

In addition, this debt is gonna be floating-rate, which means that the debt being paid back increases with interest rates.

Loans being targeted are between the $50mn and $250mn size, although lenders have said that they can finance larger tickets.

Big, big money. 🤑

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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