Missouri State Pension System Loses Money Due to FTX Bankruptcy

The FTX logo and mobile app adverts are displayed on screens in London on Nov. 10, 2022. Leon Neal/Getty Images

The Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) is estimated to have lost $1 million due to its investment in FTX.

MOSERS administers disability benefits, insurance, and retirement for most state employees in Missouri. This includes higher education staff, judges, and statewide elected officials.

Under its embattled CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX grew to be the third-largest crypto exchange by volume with over 1 million users averaging about $10 billion in trading volume per day at its peak in 2021. The Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 due to a liquidity crisis, forcing customers to abandon the platform.

MOSERS chief investment officer T.J. Carlson informed the retirement system’s board of the loss on Friday, The Kansas City Star reported. The private equity firm the pension fund invested in was identified as BlackRock, the New York-based asset management firm.

A spokesperson for MOSERS Candy Smith said in a Friday email to the outlet that the system had roughly $1.2 million of exposure to FTX at the time of the bankruptcy filing.

“This represents approximately 0.01% of the MOSERS total portfolio exposure, or about 1 basis point,” said Smith. MOSERS had $8.2 billion in assets as of June 30.

Republican senator from Missouri Josh Hawley, sent a letter (pdf) on Friday to the heads of the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S Commodities Future Trading Commission, asking the agencies to provide any documents between the agencies, the Biden administration and Democrat groups involving any correspondence about FTX or its sister firm, Alameda Research.

“The success of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s criminal enterprise made him one of America’s richest men,” Hawley wrote. “And he deployed his ill-gotten gains in service of the Democratic Party, emerging in recent years as its second largest individual donor behind only George Soros.”

Hawley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also wrote that Bankman-Fried allegedly withdrew customer deposits from FTX to offset losses at Alameda. This would represent a violation of the exchange’s terms of service.

“Customers are now left holding the bag,” wrote Hawley, who went on in his letter to accuse Bankman-Fried of “fraudulent acts” as well as donating millions of dollars in the service of Democrat candidates including President Joe Biden.

Other institutional investors with either direct or indirect exposure to FTX include the $77.3 billion Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., the $182.3 billion Washington State Investment Board, and the $182 billion Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.