| Adani business losses hit $108 billion. Meta stock soars. Hong Kong hands out half a million free air tickets. Here's what you need to know today. Gautam Adani's businesses have lost $108 billion in a week, in one of the biggest wealth wipeouts in India's history. Shares plummeted after an explosive report by short-seller Hindenburg Research forced Adani to pull a stock sale at the 11th hour and led some lenders to reject his securities as collateral for client trades. Now Adani is in talks with creditors to prepay some loans backed by pledged shares to help restore confidence in his conglomerate's financial health. Adani has seen his own personal wealth plummet by some $57 billion. The tumult has become a national issue, with lawmakers demanding answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, given how closely Adani's interests are intertwined with the nation's growth plans. A spectacular turnaround in Meta stock is bringing back flashes of big tech heydays. The Facebook owner's stock surged 23%, its biggest jump since 2013, to help it briefly trade over $500 billion in market capitalization. The latest rally comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to make the company leaner. Other big tech news wasn't quite so good. Apple reported a steeper sales decline than Wall Street feared, Amazon projected lackluster revenue in the current quarter, and Google shares slipped after fourth-quarter results narrowly missed analysts' expectations.  | Hong Kong will hand out 500,000 free air tickets to bring in much-needed visitors as part of a global publicity campaign. The city's leader John Lee announced the giveaway at the launch of "Hello Hong Kong." The giveaway will begin at the start of March and last six months and will involve various ways to win tickets, such as a lottery system and two-for-one purchases. The government is seeking to repair Hong Kong's global image which was damaged by violent protests in 2019, the imposition of tough security laws in 2020 and three years of self-imposed isolation during the pandemic. Major hedge funds have been asked by US regulators to review certain employees' personal mobile phones as part of a mushrooming probe into Wall Street's use of unofficial messaging platforms like WhatsApp. The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management, Ken Griffin's Citadel and others to search devices for evidence of business dealings on unapproved channels. The SEC argues that business conducted outside of the view of a company's compliance department can make it harder for the regulator to investigate potential wrongdoing later. Asian equities are poised for a positive open following a third day of gains on Wall Street. Futures contracts point to gains in Australia and Japan after the S&P 500 closed up more than 1%. Australian and New Zealand bonds rose in early Asia trading, echoing moves in Treasuries which saw the 10-year yield down two basis points to 3.39%. Gold slumped almost 2% as traders sold off haven assets amid renewed optimism that developed nations are reining in inflation. The European Central Bank was seemingly far more hawkish than the Federal Reserve, but that did little to disturb the rallies in equities and bonds that kicked off this year on anticipation the worst was behind the world when it comes to restrictive policy. That actually extends a trend that began in October, when a slew of steep hikes was met with a sustained surge in global stocks. Every rate hike now is seen as bringing the central bank involved significantly closer to the end of their tightening cycle. This is turning into a global game of chicken between investors and policymakers, with investors apparently more and more convinced that central banks will pull up rather than risk damaging the ever-larger bullish positions they are taking on. The worry for both sides should be the potential that inflation remains elevated, rather than coming back down the way both sides are assuming. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney. | 
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