ChainCatcher reported that according to DL News, Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short, revealed in his new book Going Infinite that Tara Mac Aulay, who founded the hedge fund Alameda with FTX founder SBF in 2017 and resigned with other management team members in April 2018, said that her decision to resign was partly due to "concerns about risk management and business ethics" and the disappearance of tens of millions of dollars in FTX's hedge fund department. Lewis said in the book that Aulay had long determined that SBF was dishonest and manipulative.
Aulay revealed that working with SBF was not easy. "SBF was very demanding and wanted everyone to work 18 hours a day and give up any sense of a normal life. He often missed meetings, didn't shower for weeks, and surrounded himself with stale food. Falling asleep at his desk was a common occurrence." Much of the team's time was spent controlling Bankman-Fried's insatiable desire for trades. Ben West, one of the five-person management team, said: "The entire management team wanted to leave."
SBF’s complete disregard for risk management triggered the events that led to Aulay’s departure. Lewis said that by early 2018, Alameda’s finances were in a “shambles.” Its trading systems had lost about $14 million, but its staff was unable to quantify the exact amount. An Alameda employee noticed that $4 million worth of XRP tokens were also missing. Mac Aulay and the entire management team and half of the employees left Alameda on April 9, 2018. They received a severance package of between $1 million and $2 million.
