Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said his comments on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried were misinterpreted.
Richard Brian/Reuters
Bankman-Fried said at NYT’s DealBook Summit he had “made a lot of mistakes.” But he denied committing fraud.
Bill Ackman said his tweet about FTX founder Bankman-Fried being “believable” was misinterpreted.
Ackman later walked back on his tweet saying FTX’s blow-up was “the most egregious, large-scale case of business gross negligence.”
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said his comments on disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried were misinterpreted.
Ackman was seen to be defending Bankman-Fried after the former FTX CEO denied committing fraud at the New York Times DealBook Summit last Wednesday.
“Clearly I made a lot of mistakes. There are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone,” Bankman-Fried told Andrew Ross Sorkin. He also said he didn’t “knowingly commingle” funds between the FTX exchange and Alameda, its affiliated trading firm.
“Call me crazy, but I think @sbf is telling the truth,” Ackman, the founder and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, tweeted Wednesday.
But Ackman — whose net worth is around $3.5 billion, per Forbes — walked back on his comments on Saturday, saying he wasn’t defending or “somehow supporting” Bankman-Fried. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” tweeted Ackman.
—Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 3, 2022
FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11 and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO on the same day after it was caught in an intense liquidity crunch for a week. The stunning collapse caught investors by surprise and Bankman-Fried has been on a media apology tour since.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice are investigating FTX’s collapse. Bankman-Fried was also reportedly interviewed by the Bahamian police on November 12.
“The @FTX_Official fiasco is, at a minimum, the most egregious, large-scale case of business gross negligence that I have observed in my career, and that conclusion is reinforced by SBF’s recent public statements,” Ackman added in the thread.
—Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 3, 2022
But “if indeed he is telling the truth, it may make it more likely that he has civil rather than criminal liability,” tweeted Ackman on Saturday.
—Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 3, 2022
Ackman did not immediately respond to a request from Insider for further comment that was sent to Pershing Square outside regular business hours.