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Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Friday, December 23rd, and this is your FT News Briefing.

Sam Bankman-Fried had a hearing yesterday.

The bill was set at $250 million.

US stocks had a horrible year, and some investors are pivoting back to bonds.

Plus, we'll look at why 2022 was the year of the I alone can fix it, CEO.

And it may be the turtle-necked founder, or it may be the guy in the suit

who thinks that they alone have the key that will unlock the problems of this company.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Sam Bankman-Fried went before a magistrate judge in New York yesterday.

The founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX had an enormous bond set,

and an initial conference in Bankman-Fried's case is scheduled for January 3rd.

Here's the FT's US legal correspondent Joe Miller on what happened in that hearing yesterday.

Firstly, we learned that despite the fact that Sam Bankman-Fried has, in the words of US

prosecutors orchestrated one of the largest frauds in American history,

he will essentially be free until trial, or as free as you can get,

if you're confined to your parents' home. He'll be released on a $250 million bond,

but which government lawyers said was the largest ever pre-trial bond.

And I think they said that in order to drive home the fact that they're not letting him off easy.

The terms are very strict. He will have to be confined to the Northern District of California,

...