• FTX has a huge mountain of debt
• Sam Bankman-Fried now thinks bankruptcy is a mistake
• New CEO complains about total failure of previous management
It all happened very quickly: in early November, doubts about FTX’s capital reserves arose after reports of clandestinely moving deposits. As a result, FTX customers fled in droves, withdrawing billions of dollars in capital. FTX could not cover this sum and so Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX and up to this point also CEO of the company, had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the USA on November 11th.
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Gigantic proportions
FTX was one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, so its bankruptcy has weighed heavily on the entire crypto market. No wonder, after all, those in charge now assume that FTX has accumulated debts totaling over 10 billion US dollars from over one million customers.
Details have now emerged from documents filed by the company in court in the US state of Delaware. The insolvent crypto exchange owes almost $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors alone. The court documents further show that the top 10 lenders accounted for about $1.45 billion of that. This amount consists of the more than $200 million each owed to the two largest customers and the more than $100 million each owed to the following eight customers.
FTX says it has already initiated a strategic review of its global assets and is now preparing to divest or restructure some businesses.
New CEO shocked
As a result of these events, Sam Bankman-Fried has stepped down as CEO and restructuring expert John J. Ray has taken the helm. However, the ex-billionaire now regrets sending FTX into Chapter 11. If he hadn’t filed for bankruptcy, “payouts would be possible again” in a month, without “customers having lost money,” Bankman-Fried explained in an interview with “Vox”. Instead, the newly installed leadership would “burn everything down out of shame,” he criticizes the new CEO.
But for the former star of the crypto scene, the air is getting thinner and thinner. Because, as “ntv” reported, citing court documents, a class action lawsuit has already been filed against Bankman-Fried in Miami. In addition, his successor, John J. Ray, complained about disastrous shortcomings after just a few days in the executive chair. According to him, he has never experienced “such a failure of corporate control and such a lack of reliable financial information” in his career as in the case of FTX.
Editorial office finanzen.net
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