SkyBridge Capital is trying to buy back FTX’s 30% stake in his company following the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, Anthony Scaramucci said.
“My legal team and my other partners are working to buy back that stake, take him off of our cap table,” and “unwind the transaction,” SkyBridge founder Scaramucci said Friday in a CNBC interview. “We’re in a worse position because of the fact that we made the decision to have Sam join the cap table at SkyBridge. There’s no question that we’re in a worse position -- he’s hurt the industry.”
Just two months ago, FTX said it was acquiring the stake in Scaramucci’s firm, which manages about $2.2 billion and invests in both hedge funds and digital assets. FTX Ventures provided SkyBridge with cash to fund growth and new product launches, and to purchase cryptocurrencies that SkyBridge would hold on its balance sheet.
Scaramucci said in the interview that his firm has had to mark down some of its securities given the swift decline in cryptocurrencies, and that it had exposure to FTX’s FTT tokens and has taken “a loss” on that.
In a September statement disclosing the deal, Scaramucci, 58, described Bankman-Fried, 30, as “a visionary who has built incredible businesses that are synergistic with the future of SkyBridge.” Bankman-Fried said FTX, which has sponsored SkyBridge’s annual SALT conference, would collaborate with Scaramucci’s firm on crypto- and non-crypto-related investments.
A few months earlier, SkyBridge suspended redemptions in its Legion Strategies Fund -- one of its smaller offerings -- after sharp declines in stocks and cryptocurrencies left its exposure to private companies at 20%. FTX was among the fund’s private investments.
The crisis enveloping FTX has snowballed this week, rattling the entire crypto market, with competitor Binance Holdings Ltd. agreeing to a hastily arranged rescue only to back out a day later. US authorities are investigating FTX, and Bankman-Fried has warned the firm will file for bankruptcy if he fails to secure capital to cover a shortfall of as much as $8 billion. On Thursday, Bankman-Fried said he’ll shutter Alameda Research, the trading house at the heart of his crumbling empire.
Scaramucci said Friday that he feels “disappointed” and “duped” by the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, calling this week the worst in the industry’s history. Scaramucci said he flew to the Bahamas this week in an attempt to help Bankman-Fried, but “it became clear that there was really not much I could do.”
--With assistance from Vildana Hajric.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.