Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He was ousted the same day the Silicon Valley-based bank collapsed.
The movement was discreet and fast.
The same day as Silicon Valley Bank (BLIMS) – Get a free report was shut down by regulators, the name of Greg Becker, its chief executive, also disappeared from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s website.
Becker was a director of the board until March 10.
To be precise, he was a Class A director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has held this position since 2019. His seat has been vacant since the bankruptcy of his bank.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco indicates on its website that there is a “vacant Group 1 seat”, the seat that Becker held. The photo of him has disappeared but there are photos of the other directors.
“Last updated March 2023,” the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says on its website.
Each of the regional Federal Reserve Banks has three classes of directors: Class A, Class B, and Class C. Class A directors are elected and represent the member banks.
Becker, along with two other bank executives, Simone Lagomarsino and Randolph (Randy) Compton, represented the banks within the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
The 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are supervised by the Federal Reserve in Washington. Regional Federal Reserve Bank boards oversee local banks and advise them on governance issues in particular. These boards also participate in the selection process for new regional Fed chairs in the event of a vacancy.
Becker sold shares before SVB collapse
Yet these boards are often singled out by Wall Street critics who denounce a kind of collusion between them and the banks they are supposed to oversee.
These critics also claim that there are conflicts of interest between the directors of the board and the industry. This is due to the fact that the head of Lehman Brothers was one of the directors of the New York Fed board at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. The collapse of his bank on September 15, 2008 is considered the spark. of the crisis that nearly wiped out the global financial system.
The San Francisco Federal Reserve did not respond to a request for comment.
Becker has been under fire since the failure of the bank he ran, Silicon Valley Bank, the second largest bank failure in US history.
He sold $3.6 million worth of SVB shares on February 27, eleven days before SVB was shut down by regulators. This was the result of a bank run, sparked by the company’s announcement that it planned to raise $2.25 billion by issuing new common and convertible preferred shares to shore up its finances, after it sold bonds in its investment portfolio at $1.8 billion. . loss.
The question everyone is asking is whether he was aware of the capital increase plan.
