How in the world is a balance sheet not a report that is generated by a system, viewable by any executive? Did they not have a CFO or any finance people or accountants?
Perhaps not?
"If you take a look at the about FTX page, it shows six senior team members: the CEO, the COO, two leaders on tech and two on compliance and legal. Something is missing. For a company managing billions of client funds, $16 billion according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), is it not odd that there is no Chief Financial Officer (CFO)?"
Depending on your line of business, this is actually not a simple thing when you're trying to mark assets to market in a meaningful way. When everything you own is liquid, it's one thing. When things are less liquid, it's another. This is true even of completely legitimate businesses.
Typically there’s a 3rd party fund administrator whose core responsibilities include calculating the value (NAV) of the fund.
Sometimes funds have Level 2 or Level 3 assets, which may require management effort to value and may not have real-time pricing available.
The fact that a company managing billions of dollars couldn't even do this much is very, very telling.
Of course, it also happens sometimes that they are cooked in some specific way, and that is used to hide that fact.