Proper governance can avert failures like FTX, Zilingo

Many corporate scandals had a charismatic leader who led firm down the wrong path

- Chor Khieng Yuit

When crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, its new chief executive John Ray III said he had never seen "such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information" in his career.

Mr Ray also oversaw the bankruptcy of the US energy and commodities giant Enron in 2001. Enron was embroiled in a massive accounting scandal and still he thinks FTX is a bigger mess than Enron - an indication of the extent of the corporate mess at FTX.

Many of the corporate scandals over the years had something in common a charismatic leader who led the company down the wrong path.

Some parallels could be drawn between leaders such as Jeff Skilling, the convicted chief executive in the Enron scandal; Elizabeth Holmes, the visionary founder of health tech start-up Theranos, who was sentenced to more than 11 years' jail in November for lying about her company's blood-testing technology; Sam Bankman-Fried, the superstar founder of crypto exchange FTX; as well as Zilingo's Ankiti Bose, the rising star in the fashion start-up industry who was fired this year over complaints about alleged financial irregularities.