Singapore state-owned investment fund Temasek announced the results of a review of its $275 million investment into cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It wrote off the sum in November last year and stated that it had performed due diligence. As we noted previously, the absence of a high profile CFO was a red flag, but hindsight criticism is easy.
Today’s statement notes that FTX’s key executives intentionally hid information from investors, including Temasek. “We are disappointed with the outcome of our investment, and the negative impact on our reputation,” said LIM Boon Heng, Temasek Chairman.
The topic of the FTX investment was discussed in Singapore parliament in November last year.
The Chairman says an independent team reviewed the transaction and found no misconduct by the team involved. However, the investment team and senior management “took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced.”
In January, Reuters said the SEC was investigating the due diligence performed by investors, citing insider sources.
Meanwhile, the fund reiterated its commitment to backing emerging technologies and early stage firms.
Temasek was by no means the only investor to get caught out. Sequoia, Softbank, Tiger Global and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan were amongst the high profile institutional investors that backed the cryptocurrency exchange. Tom Brady and his ex-wife Gisele Bündchen, were also wrong-footed after using their positions as influencers.
Meanwhile, Temasek has a variety of investments in the space. On the institutional side, they include tokenized security marketplace ADDX, tokenization infrastructure MarketNode, and payments firm Partior.
