Before the House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday, recently-appointed FTX CEO John J. Ray III gave testimony to back up comments he made to the New York Times last month about FTX being a “complete failure” the likes of which he hadn’t seen in two decades. Back in the day, Ray was chairman of Enron Creditors Recovery Corp, the accurately named entity in charge of recovering creditor funds from the most notorious accounting failure of our time. So he knows a thing or two about complete failures.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Congresswoman Ann Wagner of Missouri asked Ray to elaborate on the specific ways FTX is worse than Enron. And he did. Transcribed from a video clip:
This one is unusual, and it’s unusual in the sense that literally there’s no recordkeeping whatsoever, the absence of recordkeeping. Employees would communicate invoicing and expenses on Slack which is essentially a way of communicating for chat rooms. They used QuickBooks, a multibillion-dollar company using QuickBooks.
Let’s make sure we get a screenshot of both their faces when he said that last part:
Congresswoman Wagner then responds incredulously “QuickBooks?!”
“Nothing against QuickBooks,” replies Ray. “It’s a very nice tool, just not for a multibillion-dollar company.”
Full video:
And a relevant video:
Latest Accounting Jobs–Apply Now:
Related
Have something to add to this story? Give us a shout by email, Twitter, or text/call the tipline at 202-505-8885. As always, all tips are anonymous.
