A $190 billion teachers fund from Canada is writing off its losses after being exposed to FTX, the crypto exchange that collapsed in late 2022.
According to a new report from the Financial Times (FT), the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is keeping its distance from crypto after suffering $95 million in losses due to FTX.
FTX shut down in November of last year when it was unable to fulfill its customers’ withdrawal amid allegations of misappropriation of funds. FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is currently a series of fraud and other charges.
OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor
“We’re still working through what exactly happened there and you’re going to be careful…
It’d be unwise for us to rush [into another crypto investment based in part on] feedback from our members.”
The investment only amounted to 0.05% of the fund’s total assets, but the OTPP has still come under scrutiny for its move, given the charges FTX executives now face.
With crypto no longer on the table, Nick Jansa, the OTPP’s investment lead for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says that real-estate opportunities in Europe may be next on the fund’s radar.
“The opportunities we have seen [for real estate] in Europe, and I’m talking UK, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands, have increased for long-term capital that isn’t reliant necessarily on some of the normal market dynamics…
Certainly there are opportunities appearing that haven’t been there for quite a while…everything from residential to logistics to life sciences.”
