Singapore state investor Temasek announced on Monday that the investment team and senior management, who are responsible for its investment decisions made on the now-bankrupt crypto currency exchange FTX, have taken “collective accountability and had their compensation reduced”.
This comes after an internal review of the investment, the sovereign wealth fund said in the Chairman’s statement on FTX Internal Review.
“An independent team has conducted an internal review of the investment and the findings were directly presented to the Board Risk & Sustainability Committee and to our Board,” Temasek wrote.
“Although there was no misconduct by the investment team in reaching their investment recommendation, the investment team and senior management, who are ultimately responsible for investment decisions made, took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced,” the fund added.
Temasek announced in November last year that it would write down the value of its entire investment of $275 million in collapsed crypto currency exchange FTX. “In view of FTX’s financial position, we have decided to write down our full investment in FTX, irrespective of the outcome of FTX’s bankruptcy protection filing,” Temasek said in a statement then.
Temasek said then it has invested $210 million for a minority stake of about 1 percent in FTX International, and invested $65 million for a minority stake of approximately 1.5 percent in FTX US, across two funding rounds from October 2021 to January 2022. The cost of its investment in FTX was 0.09 percent of its net portfolio value of S$403 billion as of March 31, 2022.
FTX’s other backers such as SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital have also marked down their investment to zero after FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States last year in the high-profile crypto blowup, according to earlier reports.
Temasek, as an investor-owner, said in its statement on Monday that it seeks to deliver sustainable returns over the long term.
“While there are inherent risks whenever we invest, we believe that we have to invest in new sectors and emerging technologies to understand how these areas may impact the business and financial models of our existing portfolio, and whether they would be drivers of future value in an ever-changing world. This is why we invest into early stage companies,” the state investor said.
“With FTX, as alleged by prosecutors and as admitted by key executives at FTX and its affiliates, there was fraudulent conduct intentionally hidden from investors, including Temasek. Nevertheless, we are disappointed with the outcome of our investment, and the negative impact on our reputation,” Temasek said.