Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen may lose all their FTX share
Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen have become major stake investors in the insolvent FTX less than a year after appearing in a series of Super Bowl advertising for the company.
As of Monday’s filing in bankruptcy court, Brady owned 1.1 million common shares in FTX and Bundchen owned 686,000 shares.
The private FTX was once estimated to be worth roughly $32 billion.
Brady and Bundchen, along with hundreds of other investors, will very definitely have their shares entirely wiped out, regardless of what they paid for their stakes.
If a company declares bankruptcy, its investors will usually be the last to receive any money owed to the company. Bank depositors of FTX users, in this event, would be refunded first per US bankruptcy law.
Their part in bolstering FTX has been the subject of legal inquiry. A client quickly launched a proposed class action lawsuit against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Brady, Bundchen, and numerous other celebrity sponsors after FTX’s demise. Prominent attorneys Adam Moskowitz and David Boies have filed a lawsuit claiming that FTX was “a massive Ponzi scheme” and that its directors were “geniuses at public relations and marketing.”
Bankman-Fried and others were replaced at the head following the crypto platform’s mid-November collapse by restructuring professionals who are now presiding over FTX’s and its many affiliates bankruptcy.
Last month, the company’s new CEO, John Ray III, told a Congressional committee, “At the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to recover all the losses here.”
A federal grand jury indicted Bankman-Fried last week on eight charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, and campaign finance crimes. The federal government claims the 30-year-old businessman stole client cash from FTX to offset outsize losses at his hedge fund, Alameda. The entrepreneur was once a celebrity in the crypto industry. They further claim that he utilised the money to support a luxury lifestyle for himself and his staff.