FTX’s collateral damage continues, as Singapore’s Temasek announces…

• Singapore’s Temasek Holdings will cut the pay of its executives responsible for the failed FTX investment of $275 million.
• Temasek’s only crypto investment had been made in FTX.

Singapore’s state-owned investment fund, Temasek Holdings, has reduced the pay of the staff members who were responsible for the failed investment of $275 million in the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.

Temasek Holdings Chairman Lim Boon Heng issued a statement on 29 May, in which he confirmed that FTX’s fraudulent activity had been “intentionally hidden” from investors, including Temasek.

Although there was no misconduct by the Temasek investment team, the investment team and senior management, who are ultimately responsible for investment decisions, have accepted collective responsibility.

As a result of this bad investment decision, Temasek has decided to lower their remuneration. It did not specify the percentage that was cut.

Failed FTX investment hurts fund’s reputation

On 17 November 2022, Temasek Holdings wrote down its entire investment in FTX days before the crypto exchange failed. Temasek had invested $210 million in FTX International and $65 million in FTX as of November 2022. This overall investment accounted for 0.09% of the firm’s net portfolio value of $293.5 billion from the previous year.

Temasek claimed at the time that it spent eight months on FTX due diligence, studying its audited financial statements, analyzing regulatory risk, and cyber security threats.

However, in December 2022, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Lawrence Wong, said that Temasek’s losses had harmed the fund’s reputation.

He said:

“The fact that other leading global institutional investors like BlackRock and Sequoia Capital also invested in FTX does not mitigate this.”

According to Forbes, Temasek was once the second-largest outside investor in Sam Bankman-Fried’s firm, acquiring 7 million shares. However, after the crypto exchange crashed, the Singaporean fund was compelled to answer for their investment disaster. Temasek stated that it aims to refine its investment appraisal system following FTX, particularly for quickly rising ventures.

FTX was the sole investment Temasek had in a crypto venture.

Temasek underlined that it does not intend to invest in cryptocurrencies and that it will be careful when assessing new blockchain projects.