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FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

wsj.com

11–20 of 217 posts

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#11

How common was it for founders to cash out on common shares in the Series C-E rounds the last decade?

Very. It's usually not this egregious though. Founders might want stable finances for their family or the ability to buy a reasonable home, but VCs want them to keep going, so VCs allow founders to cash out some of their equity so that founders don't go for an exit for the sake of their personal finances.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the investors are willing to buy your shares from you, then why not? I've done secondary sales as early as seed. Unless you hide it from the board somehow, or you are explicitly prohibited from doing this, it's just a business transaction.

Not an ethics question of why or why not, I'm just curious.

It was certainly much more common the last few years. However, those transactions are more of "hey investor, let me sell you some of my shares in this round" and not whatever complex behavior is described in this article.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#13

> the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals. The most fascinating part of this whole story to me is just how few checks and balances there were in this company. Even without a board, did major investors not get his quarterly financials? If the leaked balance sheet was any indication of their level financial engineering cap…

Given what we know now, those financials were probably completely wrong.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#14

I don't know if it will happen, but a potentially good outcome here would be some regulation on the business practices of sufficiently large private companies in order to ensure they meet some basic level of corporate governance. Maybe they don't need the same level of scrutiny publicly traded companies have, but establishing minimum standards of conduct would help avert crises like this that can spread across entire…

Fraud ands theft are already illegal.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#15
post #11

How common was it for founders to cash out on common shares in the Series C-E rounds the last decade?

Very. It's usually not this egregious though. Founders might want stable finances for their family or the ability to buy a reasonable home, but VCs want them to keep going, so VCs allow founders to cash out some of their equity so that founders don't go for an exit for the sake of their personal finances.

Makes sense, thanks.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#16
post #7

For people looking for prosecution like embezzlement or something else, these things usually rely on a violation of company policy then enabling a violation of a criminal law FTX/Alameda had no company policies and in this case disclosed what they were going to do to investors. “Buyout binance’s stake”. There is only so much the governments do to prevent you from wiring money to a sketchy opaque shadow bank in the Ba…

There are likely other charges that they could face. I don't think this rises to the level of embezzlement (although IANAL), but the missing customer deposits, lack of strict segregation between Alameda and FTX, and the use of company assets for personal loans and purchases will probably lead to indictments.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#17
post #7

For people looking for prosecution like embezzlement or something else, these things usually rely on a violation of company policy then enabling a violation of a criminal law FTX/Alameda had no company policies and in this case disclosed what they were going to do to investors. “Buyout binance’s stake”. There is only so much the governments do to prevent you from wiring money to a sketchy opaque shadow bank in the Ba…

There are likely other charges that they could face. I don't think this rises to the level of embezzlement (although IANAL), but the missing customer deposits, lack of strict segregation between Alameda and FTX, and the use of company assets for personal loans and purchases will probably lead to indictments.

that I agree on, just commenting on this specific article

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#18

I don't know if it will happen, but a potentially good outcome here would be some regulation on the business practices of sufficiently large private companies in order to ensure they meet some basic level of corporate governance. Maybe they don't need the same level of scrutiny publicly traded companies have, but establishing minimum standards of conduct would help avert crises like this that can spread across entire…

[deleted]

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#19

I don't know if it will happen, but a potentially good outcome here would be some regulation on the business practices of sufficiently large private companies in order to ensure they meet some basic level of corporate governance. Maybe they don't need the same level of scrutiny publicly traded companies have, but establishing minimum standards of conduct would help avert crises like this that can spread across entire…

Fraud ands theft are already illegal.

And it's becoming more and more apparent that the "investors" had no desire to look closely at their golden baby.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#20

I don't know if it will happen, but a potentially good outcome here would be some regulation on the business practices of sufficiently large private companies in order to ensure they meet some basic level of corporate governance. Maybe they don't need the same level of scrutiny publicly traded companies have, but establishing minimum standards of conduct would help avert crises like this that can spread across entire…

Fraud ands theft are already illegal.

Yes, but the total lack of corporate governance that contributed to it is totally legal, and could have possibly prevented the fraud and theft.
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