Senators call on former Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank CEOs to testify

WASHINGTON — Bipartisan leaders of a Senate committee investigating the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank called Thursday for some firms' erstwhile CEOs to attest astir the collapses that person sparked fears astir broader economical damage.

Ex-SVB CEO Gregory Becker and erstwhile Signature CEO Joseph DePaolo "must reply for" their banks' "downfall," wrote Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Tim Scott, R-S.C., successful letters to the erstwhile executives. Brown and Scott are the president and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Both Becker and DePaolo indicated they were incapable to be a March 28 Banking Committee proceeding connected the firms' failure, according to the letters. Brown and Scott urged the 2 erstwhile executives to reply the panel's questions "at a aboriginal date."

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, and Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang are scheduled to attest astatine the Senate hearing. Barr is starring the Fed's interior reappraisal of the slope failures.

In their letter to Becker, Brown and Scott said they sought accusation connected SVB's alleged negligent concern practices, including the "overwhelming" proportionality of uninsured depositors soon earlier the FDIC closed the slope earlier this month.

"As the CEO of SVB astatine the clip of its collapse, your grounds connected the bank's firm governance, hazard management, accelerated growth, and lawsuit manufacture and assemblage concentration, arsenic good arsenic the overwhelming proportionality of uninsured depositors and the outgo of bonuses successful the hours starring up to the seizure of the slope by regulators, would code respective important matters the Committee needs to understand," the senators wrote.

Before it collapsed, 94% of SVB's deposits sat supra the FDIC's $250,000 security limit. The senators besides asked DePaolo to explicate Signature's "outsized proportionality of uninsured depositors" on with its "corporate governance, hazard management, accelerated maturation (and) concern mix."

Testimony could beryllium provided without disclosing confidential supervisory information, slope records oregon files, Brown and Scott wrote.