Skip to content

Highlights from the DealBook Summit: Sam Bankman-Fried, Mark Zuckerberg and more

    DealBook held its annual conference in New York yesterday, a busy day of high-level discussions with leaders from the worlds of politics, business and culture. Speakers Included:

    • Sam Bankman Friedfounder of FTX

    • Andy JassieCEO, Amazon

    • Volodymyr Zelenskypresident of Ukraine

    • Larry FinkCEO, BlackRock

    • Janet YellenUS Treasury Secretary

    • Reed Hastingsco-CEO, Netflix

    • Mark ZuckerbergDirector, Meta

    • Mike Penceformer Vice President of the United States

    • am Affleckactor, director and CEO, Artists Equity

    • Shou ChewDirector, TikTok

    • Benjamin Netanyahucandidate for Prime Minister of Israel

    Here you can catch up all day long. But first, here are some highlights.

    Would Sam Bankman-Fried speak or not? That was the big question on Wednesday’s DealBook Summit attendees. Finally, the fallen crypto tycoon made good on his promise in his first public appearance since the collapse of FTX, his trading exchange. Andrew Ross Sorkin of The Times questioned him for over an hour in an interview that generated headlines and tweets around the world.

    SBF, as he’s known, answered many questions (and dodged a lot of them, too) about how his company went bankrupt last month, a multibillion-dollar collapse that could take years to sort out in bankruptcy courts. The ordeal also wiped out much of his personal wealth. As he spoke, it became increasingly clear that the lost fortunes will not be recovered. In the end, he said he “messed up”.

    • He said he “did not knowingly mix” the funds of FTX clients. with that of Alameda Research, the trading arm of the exchange, which served as a market maker on FTX, facilitating client trades and making its own high-risk leverage bets.

    • He denied knowingly committing fraud. “I never tried to cheat on anyone,” he said.

    • He said he didn’t realize the perilous position the firms were in until it was too late.

    • He admitted that major mistakes were madeincluding poor if not non-existent risk management and no oversight to protect client accounts.

    • He said he was telling the truth – or that he was unaware of bending it. “I don’t know of the times I lied,” he told Andrew, saying he was “as truthful as I know how to be.”

    • He said the political donations he had madethe filings showed to be $40 million were not intended as an attempt to buy access to lawmakers.

    Watch the full interview here and read the full transcript here.

    Bret Taylor, co-CEO of Salesforce, is stepping down. The unexpected departure, which takes effect in January, means that co-founder Marc Benioff will once again be sole CEO as the software giant faces a downturn in the company’s IT spending. Taylor, the architect of Salesforce’s more than $27 billion acquisition of Slack, will be leaving to start a new company.

    There is no risk of Twitter being pulled from the Apple App Store, says Elon Musk. The billionaire Twitter owner said Wednesday he met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and received assurances that Apple had “never considered” removing the social media platform from its apps marketplace. Such a move would have cut Twitter off from the billions of people who use Apple products.

    Fed Chairman Jay Powell ends jumbo rate hikes. Shares rose Wednesday on news that the central bank may slow the pace of borrowing costs at its meeting this month. The Fed raised rates from near zero last month to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent in March.

    Reed HastingsNetflix’s CEO said he regretted not launching an ad-supported tier for the streaming service sooner. “And I wish we had turned it around a few years earlier,” he said.

    Mr. Hastings also defended Musk’s contentious acquisition of Twitter, saying he was “excited” to see what the Tesla CEO is doing with the social media platform. “Elon Musk is the bravest, most creative person in the world,” he said, adding, “I am 100 percent convinced that he is trying to help the world in all his endeavours.”

    Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, said Apple had too much power as a gatekeeper for apps in its market. Compared to other platforms like Google Play or Windows, he said, Apple is “only where one company can control what apps come on the device,” and that’s not “sustainable or good.”

    Meta’s share price is down more than 60 percent this year as revenues plummet amid a broad digital advertising slump. Another factor affecting the company: privacy features introduced by Apple last year have made it harder for social media apps like Facebook to target their users with ads.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called for more regulation of the cryptocurrency sector, branded the collapse of Mr Bankman-Fried’s FTX as a “Lehman moment” for the industry and reiterated her skepticism about the industry.

    “I think everything we’ve been through in recent weeks, but also before, says that this is an industry that really needs adequate regulation, and that’s not the case,” she said, adding that it was fortunate that the problems had not spread to the mainstream financial sector.

    “And crypto is so big that we have suffered significant damage to investors and especially to people who are not very aware of the risks they face, and that is very bad,” she said.

    Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, didn’t hold back when asked about FTX’s failure. He said the executives there may have engaged in some sort of “misconduct with serious consequences”. But he also said venture capitalists, who helped fund the exchange, bore at least some of the debt. He said BlackRock had invested $24 million in FTX.

    Fink also predicted that the demise of FTX would lead venture capital firms to rethink where they put their money. “It doesn’t go to all those things that served us well to get food faster or find a cab sooner,” Mr. Fink said. “I think it’s going to be a lot more difficult science and require a lot more technical understanding.”

    President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine hit on Musk’s peace proposal to resolve the war there and invited Tesla’s CEO to visit his country to see the damage for himself before making any pronouncements.

    “I don’t know if someone influences him or if he makes those choices himself,” he said when asked about the entrepreneur, who in October outlined a plan for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. “If you want to understand what Russia has done here, come to Ukraine and you will see this with your own eyes,” he said, adding, “and then you will tell us how to end this war, who started it and when we can put an end to it.

    Mr Zelensky added that he did not believe Russia would use nuclear weapons in the war, said the West’s main concern should be President Vladimir Putin’s military expansionist ambitions, and warned that if he succeeded in Ukraine, neighboring democracies could be next.

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company’s battle with employees over unionization was “far from over”, claiming a vote in Staten Island to form the first US union at the tech giant was being teased by “irregularities”.

    “That has a real chance of ending up in federal courts,” he said.

    Mr Jassy added that the company did not like unions being ‘bureaucratic’, echoing comments he made in another interview with Andrew that the National Labor Relations Board said labor law was being breached.

    That feeling “I thought it was pretty non-controversial and clear,” he said, “but I think you shouldn’t say that, or some people think you shouldn’t say that.”