How Sam Bankman-Fried seduced blue-chip investors

With crypto trading firm FTX having filed for bankruptcy, investments by some of the world’s most-respected hedge fund managers look to be a complete wipeout.

Antoine Gara, Harriet Agnew, Tabby Kinder and Richard Waters

Nov 13, 2022 – 5.11pm

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

New York/London/San Francisco | It was a surprise phone call from an old university professor that launched private equity investor Orlando Bravo into becoming one of the most prominent and vocal supporters of Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto trading firm FTX.

The call was from Joseph Bankman, a professor of law and business at Stanford University who had taught Bravo in the late 1990s. At the time, in mid-2021, Bravo’s $US122 billion ($182 billion) private equity firm Thoma Bravo was opening an office in Miami, the city where Bankman’s son Sam had just paid $US135 million for a 19-year naming rights contract with the local NBA team.

Financial Times