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NEW YORK — The new CEO of troubled cryptocurrency platform FTX said Saturday the company was making "every effort to secure all assets" following unauthorised transactions potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Unauthorized access to certain assets has occurred," CEO John Ray said in a statement posted to Twitter by FTX's general counsel, Ryne Miller.

FTX officials did not detail the quantity of unauthorised transactions made, but cryptocurrency analysis firm Elliptic said in a report published Saturday that "$477 million is suspected to have been stolen".

More than "$663 million in various tokens" had been drained from FTX's wallets only 24 hours after it filed for bankruptcy, Elliptic said, with the difference "believed to have been moved into secure storage by FTX themselves".

FTX US and FTX.com "continue to make every effort to secure all assets, wherever located", Ray, who specialises in corporate turnarounds, said in the statement.

The announcement comes a day after FTX filed for bankruptcy, part of a stunning collapse that has reverberated through the relatively young sector, sending other cryptocurrencies plummeting and drawing scrutiny from government regulators.

Additionally, the platform's chief executive, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, once considered a star in the freewheeling cryptocurrency world, resigned.

As recently as 10 days ago, FTX was considered the world's second-largest cryptocurrency platform, at one point valued at $32 billion.

But the company is now left trying to reassure a skeptical public.

Fall from grace 

"Among other things, we are in the process of removing trading and withdrawal functionality and moving as many digital assets as can be identified to a new cold wallet custodian," Ray said in the statement.

"Cold storage" refers to moving cryptocurrency assets to a hardware "wallet" unconnected to the Internet — to assure its security. 

Ray added that "an active fact review and mitigation exercise was initiated immediately in response" to the unauthorised transactions.

Overnight, Miller had tweeted about an investigation into anomalies and other unclear movements, and by Saturday morning indicated that "unauthorised transactions" had occurred.

FTX's troubles first surfaced amid press reports that its Alameda Research trading house was involved in a risky financial arrangement with FTX.com that appeared to involve grave conflicts of interest. 

Financial media reported that FTX executives knew the platform was using billions in customer funds to prop up Alameda.

Adding to the drama, Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, agreed to buy FTX.com on Tuesday — before scrapping the takeover just a day later. 

FTX is being investigated by both the US Securities and Exchange Commission and The New York state Justice Department, according to the New York Times, which cited sources close to those probes.

The fall from grace even stretched to the world of sports, where the Miami Heat announced its FTX Arena is set for a rename and the Mercedes Formula One team said it had suspended a sponsorship deal with FTX and removed the company's logos from its cars ahead of this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has not released full sales figures for its annual Singles Day event for the first time ever, as a cooling economy dampened demand.

Launched in 2009, Singles Day is the world's largest shopping festival, dwarfing similar US events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of sales. 

Alibaba's sales last year hit 540.3 billion yuan ($76.1 billion), and many were watching to see if the company and other retailers taking part could combine for a record one trillion yuan in sales.

In a statement Saturday, Alibaba said results for this year's event were "in line with last year's... despite macro challenges and COVID-related impact", without offering details.

Some 290,000 brands participated in 2022, it added, with merchants offering varying levels of discounts starting as early as late October.

Research firm Syntun a day earlier estimated that platforms including Alibaba and JD.com had reached a combined 262 billion yuan between 8:00pm Thursday and 2:00pm (0600 GMT) Friday.

Once a festival of frenzied consumption led by Alibaba's effervescent founder Jack Ma, Singles Day has been more muted in recent years amid a Beijing crackdown on online platforms and waning state media coverage.

In April, regulators fined Alibaba $2.8 billion for anti-competitive practices and Ma's public presence has been noticeably diminished over the past two years.

"In terms of communications from the platform companies around the festival, there's been a shift away from celebrating excessive consumption and emphasising gross merchandise value [GMV]," Jacob Cooke, CEO of e-commerce consultancy WPIC Marketing + Technologies said. 

"The shift has been going on for a few years now, and that's related to common prosperity, the anti-monopoly drive," he added, referring to President Xi Jinping's ongoing drive to curb the influence of big tech. 

Consumers are also tightening their belts as Beijing persists with a zero-COVID strategy that has led to widespread pay cuts and disrupted supply chains.

Conceived by Alibaba, the event's title riffs on a tongue-in-cheek celebration of singlehood inspired by the four ones — "11/11" — that denote its date of November 11.

Alibaba is scheduled to report its earnings to stakeholders next week.

NEW YORK — Crisis-struck cryptocurrency platform FTX has gone bankrupt in the United States and its chief executive Sam Bankman Fried has resigned, it said on Friday, the latest blow in a saga that has reverberated across the digital currency landscape.

The filing comes after the world's biggest cryptocurrency platform Binance agreed to buy its rival earlier this week but backed out, leading market players to consider possible regulator responses.

FTX Group announced in a statement Friday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, adding it has begun an "orderly process to review and monetise assets for the benefit of all global stakeholders".

Chapter 11 is a US mechanism allowing a company to restructure its debts under court supervision while continuing to operate.

This week's financial chaos at FTX has seen major crypto currencies, including bitcoin, plunge.

Bankman-Fried issued a "sincere" apology Thursday, adding FTX would do "everything we can to raise liquidity".

The cash-strapped company added in its statement that it has appointed John J. Ray as chief executive with immediate effect.

"The immediate relief of Chapter 11 is appropriate to provide the FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation," said Ray in the statement.

"Stakeholders should understand that events have been fast-moving and the new team is engaged only recently".

"Many employees of the FTX Group in various countries are expected to continue with the FTX Group and assist Mr Ray and independent professionals in its operations during the Chapter 11 proceedings," the statement said.

Binance agreed to buy FTX.com on Tuesday — before scrapping the takeover just a day later.

Binance Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao defended himself against accusations of any purposeful plot after the deal fell apart.

"FTX going down is not good for anyone in the industry. Do not view it as a win for us. User confidence is severely shaken," he tweeted.

The platform's collapse came as a shock even for an already turbulent industry.

Bankman-Fried, who worked as a broker on Wall Street before moving to Hong Kong in 2017, had cultivated friends in Washington and basked in glowing tributes when he stepped in to rescue other ailing crypto companies earlier in the year.

The turmoil at FTX, at one point valued at $32 billion, is a spectacular reversal of fortune for the founder and one-time cryptocurrency wunderkind.

"This is another black eye for the industry," David Holt, a cryptocurrency industry expert at CFRA, said of FTX's troubles.

The fall from grace even stretched to the world of sports where the Miami Heat announced its FTX Arena is set for a rename and the Mercedes Formula One team said it had suspended a sponsorship deal with FTX and removed the company's logos from its cars ahead of this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

The Heat tweeted Friday that it and Miami-Dade County were "immediately taking action to terminate our business relationships with FTX", including finding "a new naming rights partner for the arena".

Growing doubts 

Doubts had already been growing about the financial stability of FTX, despite Bankman-Fried's good standing in Washington as a public face of crypto investing.

Attention had focused on the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a trading house also owned by Bankman-Fried that was taken down from the internet on Wednesday, reports said.

Specialist media site CoinDesk reported that 40 per cent of Alameda's balance sheet comprised FTX's FTT tokens, raising concerns of a potential conflict of interest.

"We don't know exactly what happened, but from all the reporting it looks like there was a lot of misconduct," former US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyer Howard Fischer said on the CNBC network Friday, predicting that some clients would sue in order to recover their investments.

The company is currently under investigation by the SEC, according to The New York Times, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The regulator, which does not usually comment on ongoing investigations, did not respond to AFP's request for comment Friday, nor did the Department of Justice. 

Media reports suggest FTX had needed to find about $8 billion to plug a massive hole in its finances and escape bankruptcy.

Binance meanwhile axed its FTX takeover deal late on Wednesday and cited recent press reports about mismanagement of client funds and potential investigations.

Bankman-Fried, the son of Stanford Law School professors and a graduate of the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has long been a vocal advocate for smoother access to the crypto market for the general public, particularly in the United States.

Kevin O'Leary, president of a venture capital firm and television personality who had invested in FTX, on Friday called for urgent regulations to safeguard the industry. 

"I lost money in the account, but I'm still going to invest on crypto," he told CNBC.

NEW YORK — Facebook owner Meta will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in "the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history", boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.

He said the cuts represented 13 per cent of the social media titan's workforce and would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The tech industry is in a serious slump and several major firms have announced mass lay-offs — Twitter's new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week.

"I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here," Zuckerberg said in a note to staff.

"I know this is tough for everyone, and I'm especially sorry to those impacted."

Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Google are suffering with advertisers looking to cut costs as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.

Zuckerberg told 87,000-strong staff he had expected the boost in e-commerce and online activity during the COVID pandemic to continue, but added: "I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."

The downturn has affected companies across the sector, with Apple and Amazon also recently announcing results that disappointed investors.

But Meta also faces some unique problems of its own.

The California-based company is being squeezed by Zuckerberg's decision to devote billions of dollars to developing the metaverse, an immersive version of the web accessed via virtual reality headsets.

Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $3.5 billion.

Facebook is also struggling to fend off Chinese-owned TikTok, the now dominant social media for younger users to the detriment of Meta's Instagram.

'Last resort' 

Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, said "Meta is amidst an identity crises" and that severe cost-cutting was "inevitable".

"The company has one foot in a risky long-term metaverse bet and another foot failing to compete with TikTok," he added.

Zuckerman has hinted several times this year that belt-tightening measures were just around the corner and said in his letter on Wednesday that staff layoffs were a "last resort".

Meta would also keep a hiring freeze going into next year, he said, and other spending cuts were envisaged.

"Fundamentally, we're making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we're operating efficiently," Zuckerman wrote.

The measures were also a message to Wall Street, where the company's poor performance has sent the Meta share price plummeting by 70 per cent since the start of the year.

Last month, Meta announced profits of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, a 52 per cent decrease year-on-year.

The slump in profits comes despite its platforms dominating the world in terms of users — Facebook alone claims to have around two billion people who log on daily. 

SHARM EL SHEIKH — The United Arab Emirates and Egypt agreed Tuesday to develop one of the world's largest wind farms in a deal struck on the sidelines of the UN's COP27 climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh. 

The 10 gigawatt (GW) onshore wind project in Egypt will produce 47,790GWh of clean energy annually once it is completed, the UAE's state news agency WAM said in a statement, without specifying an exact timeframe. 

It will offset 23.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions — equivalent to around nine per cent of Egypt's current CO2 output, according to WAM.

The wind farm will also save Egypt an estimated $5 billion in annual natural gas costs and help create as many as 100,000 jobs, it said. 

Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan joined his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al Sisi at the signing of the agreement between the UAE's Masdar renewable energy firm and Egypt's Infinity Power and Hassan Allam Utilities.

In a statement on Twitter, Sheikh Mohamed said the deal was "consistent with our commitment to advance renewable energy solutions that support sustainable development".

The UN's COP27 climate summit kicked off Sunday in Egypt with warnings against backsliding on efforts to cut emissions and calls for rich nations to compensate poor countries after a year of extreme weather disasters. 

"We will endeavour to take forward the gains made here at COP27, as the UAE prepares to host COP28 next year," WAM quoted Emirati industry minister Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber as saying. 

COP28 will be held in the UAE from November 6-17, 2023. 

PARIS — French supermarket giant Carrefour announced plans Tuesday to expand its discount operations and own brand products as it continues to cut costs amid spiralling inflation.

The move comes as part of plans to slash costs by 4 billion euros (dollars) through to 2026 under a strategy which also sees a still unknown number of job cuts.

"We are speeding up our transformation to consolidate our model of sustainable growth," said chairman Alexandre Bompard in a statement, as the group also looks to expand its presence in e-commerce.

As it bears down on costs amid a cost-of-living crisis, Carrefour aims to lift own brand foodstuff sales to 40 per cent of total sales from a current 33 per cent.

Bompard, at the helm since 2017, is also set to launch in France the group's Brazilian discount chain Atacadao from the third quarter of next year, as well as further develop another low-cost brand Supeco, notably lifting its presence from 120 stores in Spain to 200 by 2026.

Supeco began operations in Senegal in 2019 and has since spread its wings to Ivory Coast and Morocco while also launching operations in Spain, Italy, Poland and Romania as well as Brazil.

Carrefour says it is stepping up commitment to local partner producers from a current 39,000 to 50,000 over the coming three years.

It will further expand its Potager City brand, which distributes online subscription-based extra-fresh and seasonal fruit.

The group sees itself as at the forefront of increasing locally-produced food transition to within 50 kilometres of sale points.

Shares in Carrefour were down 1.8 per cent at 16.26 euros in mid-morning trading in Paris, compared with a year high reached in May of 21.03 euros.

The group employs some 320,000 people in around 30 countries.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia reeling from global warming impacts got a $1.4 billion philanthropic boost Monday to help them adapt to a world increasingly impacted by climate change.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant, distributed over four years, is earmarked for scaling up regional innovations that build resilience against drought, heat waves and extreme flooding amplified by a warming world, said an announcement at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh.

Extreme weather has ravaged crops and reduced yields this year across four continents.

Organisations representing some 350 million family farmers, meanwhile, released an open letter to world leaders Monday warning that global food security is at risk unless governments boost finance for small-scale production, and calling for a shift from industrial agriculture towards more diverse, low-input methods.

"The surge in hunger over the last year has exposed the fragility of a global food system" ill-equipped for climate shocks, the letter from 70 organisations representing farmers, fishers and forest producers said.

"Building a food system that can feed the world on a hot planet must be a priority for COP27."

Nearly a hundred world leaders are kicking off the two-week UN summit in Egypt to speed the greening of the global economy and increase financial flows to developing countries where climate impacts are already shaving GDP points off their economies.

Agriculture forms the backbone of many African economies, employing on average over 50 percent of the labour force and accounting for a third of total African gross domestic product.

At least 2 billion people worldwide depend on smallholder farms for food and income, but currently only two percent of global climate finance helps them adapt to climate change predicted to deepen food and economic crises over the coming decades.

"The effects of climate change have already been devastating, and every moment the world delays action, more people suffer, and the solutions become more complex and costly," said Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman.

"Leaders must listen to the voices of African farmers and governments to understand their priorities and respond with urgency."

Food security 

The money will be channelled to so-called climate-smart agriculture projects, including new digital technologies, innovations in livestock farming, and — working with the UN's International Fund for Agriculture Development — support for women smallholder farmers, Suzman said.

A "weather intelligence platform" developed with the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organisation, for example, will allow farmers to better anticipate climate threats, with potentially crop-saving updates delivered via cellphone text messages.

"More funding is necessary to ensure agricultural and technological innovations are widely available to vulnerable communities," Bill Gates, who is not attending the summit, said in a statement.

Analysts welcomed the new funding stream, but cautioned that much broader support was needed.

"The Gates Foundation initiative is important and timely, with COP27 being dubbed the 'Africa COP'," Elizabeth Robinson, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told AFP.

"But the scale of the problem is such that governments, private sector and international organisations all need to increase their commitments to food security."

Overall, there is an annual $41 billion adaptation "finance gap" in Africa, according to the Global Centre on Adaptation, based in Rotterdam.

Claire McConnel, a food and agriculture expert at climate policy think tank E3G, said philanthropic funding and public finance can play an "important role" in leveraging private sector investments for adaptation.

"Partnerships with African farmers' organisations and research institutes based on the continent will be key to ensuring investments meet farmers' needs and money is spent effectively and efficiently," she said, commenting on the announcement.