Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is writing off the entire value of its investment in Sam Bankman-Fried's now-bankrupt FTX, citing potential fraud, as the impact of the cryptocurrency exchange's spectacular flameout ripples through to Canada. OTPP says it will book a US$95 million loss as a result of the bankruptcy, an abrupt end to a position it entered just a year ago (if we want to get technical, as we like to do occasionally around these parts – OTPP put US$75 million into FTX's international and U.S. divisions last October through its venture capital arm, then pushed another US$20 million in chips into FTX.US back in January.) The pension plan giant with $242.5 billion in assets under management says the writeoff will have a limited impact, given that the FTX investment was less than 0.05 per cent of its portfolio.

MUSK ULTIMATUM SPARKS TWITTER EXODUS

Well, Elon Musk's ultimatum that Twitter employees either commit to the company's new “hardcore” (his words, not mine) work mode or get out has, uh, not gone the way the world's richest man intended. According to reporting from our Bloomberg News partners, employees have been leaving en masse in the wake of the pronouncement, dealing a blow to Musk's shiny new US$44 billion toy. Twitter has reportedly closed it offices until Monday, and Musk has walked back his demands to have everyone abandon work-from-home measures introduced in the pandemic. Not to read into just a single company, let alone one where Musk slashed staff by 50 per cent in the early days of his ownership, the whole debacle does make one wonder how much the balance of power has really tipped back to the employer as recession risks loom.

ANOTHER TWIST IN THE TURQUOISE HILL TAKEOVER

It appears that Rio Tinto is facing another hurdle in its planned takeover of Turquoise Hill. The Aussie mining giant has terminated a deal with a pair of dissident shareholders to get the $43 per share takeover across the finish line, after that side deal drew the scrutiny of Quebec regulators. Now, Rio already owns a majority stake in Turquoise Hill, which in turn holds a majority stake in the massive Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia, but those former dissidents are exactly wilting violets – the largest of them, Pentwater, owns more than 15 per cent of Turquoise Hill. Interesting to see how this all plays out.

QATAR BANS BOOZE SALES AT WORLD CUP

Now, I will preface this by saying we have no shortage of soccer hooligans around these parts – I fully expect Paul Bagnell, Andy Bell and former BNN segment producer Rob Graham already have pub plans in place – but there's no such luck if you're heading to Doha after Qatar reversed plans to allow beer sales in the stadiums. That's a potential blow to booze giant AB InBev, which had paid FIFA millions of dollars for the rights to sell Budweiser at the games. While Qatar is not a strictly dry country, sales of alcohol are usually restricted to high-end hotels.

OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

  • The federal government is planning to apply national security tests to new port investments, broadening the scope of its review in order to take “swift, decisive action” should it identify a threat.
  • Shares of The Gap are jumping in the premarket – up nearly nine per cent – after the clothing retailer topped quarterly expectations. Oddly, for anyone that's watched the company for any amount of time, it was perpetual laggard Banana Republic that led the way in comparable sales growth, up 10 per cent.

NOTABLE RELEASES/EVENTS

  • Notable data: Teranet-National Bank House Price Index, Industrial Product and Raw Materials Price Indices, : International Securities Transactions, U.S. Existing Home Sales, U.S. Leading Indicators
  • Notable earnings: Foot Locker, The Children's Place