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Government The Almighty Buck

The Fed Had Already Spotted Big Problems at SVB Before Its Collapse (smh.com.au) 150

And starting in 2021 — long before the run on Silicon Valley Bank — the Federal Reserve had "repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems," reports the New York Times: In 2021, a Fed review of the growing bank found serious weaknesses in how it was handling key risks. Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations. Those warnings, known as "matters requiring attention" and "matters requiring immediate attention," flagged that the firm was doing a bad job of ensuring that it would have enough easy-to-tap cash on hand in the event of trouble.

But the bank did not fix its vulnerabilities. By July 2022, Silicon Valley Bank was in a full supervisory review — getting a more careful look — and was ultimately rated deficient for governance and controls. It was placed under a set of restrictions that prevented it from growing through acquisitions. Last autumn, staff members from the San Francisco Fed met with senior leaders at the firm to talk about their ability to gain access to enough cash in a crisis and possible exposure to losses as interest rates rose.

It became clear to the Fed that the firm was using bad models to determine how its business would fare as the central bank raised rates: Its leaders were assuming that higher interest revenue would substantially help their financial situation as rates went up, but that was out of step with reality. y early 2023, Silicon Valley Bank was in what the Fed calls a "horizontal review," an assessment meant to gauge the strength of risk management. That checkup identified additional deficiencies — but at that point, the bank's days were numbered. In early March, it faced a run and failed within a matter of days....

The picture that is emerging is one of a bank whose leaders failed to plan for a realistic future and neglected looming financial and operational problems, even as they were raised by Fed supervisors. For instance, according to a person familiar with the matter, executives at the firm were told of cybersecurity problems both by internal employees and by the Fed — but ignored the concerns.

The Federal Reserve Bank system has 12 distircts, and the one overseeing California had a board of directors which included SVB's CEO Greg Becker, the article points out. "While board members do not play a role in bank supervision, the optics of the situation are bad."
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The Fed Had Already Spotted Big Problems at SVB Before Its Collapse

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  • by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @05:53PM (#63383573)

    The good news from this story is that this didn't leak; despite these concerns being raised, they didn't get out into the media, which would have killed the bank immediately.

    But, of course, the problem this reveals is that the watchdog barked and nothing happened. This is BAD. This sort of misbehaviour needs to have serious consequences for the executives responsible (think prison sentences and massive fines).

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Not even sure it is a problem of the watchdog barked and they did nothing. The situation they put themselves in wasn't one they could extradite themselves from overnight or even over a year. The bonds had 3 year horizons, The only way out was to sell at a lose (which may have triggered the exact same result as the run) or let them mature and take a small profit and hope that in the time between the now and maturation they didn't experience a run (which of course they did). They were playing russian roulette
    • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @07:15PM (#63383679)

      Banks get MRA's from regulators all the time. It's part of a continuous audit process. However, to get that many in such a short period of time and then not have actionable plans in place to cure the deficiencies is not common at all. At many banks, having a "rap sheet" like that will trigger cuts to the bonus pool for leadership and/or disciplinary action against the people responsible. The fact that none of that occurred (at least to my knowledge), shows an epic miss in how the bank was governed. The relevant C suite folks as well as the members of the board should be held accountable (fines and censure at a minimum) for the lack of oversight. Those clowns are probably on a number of other boards. Hopefully someone is looking at those other firms for evidence of similar shenanigans.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        However, to get that many in such a short period of time and then not have actionable plans in place to cure the deficiencies is not common at all.

        Actually it may have had a plan, but not actioned in fast enough. In a reply I made to someone else pointing out that all the CEO of relevance (HR and marketing are not relevant) were white males (replying to the usual woke caused the failure BS), and pointing out the 1 female of relevance had only been in the position since January, someone pointed out that the role of Chief Risk Manager at the bank had only been created in 2021.

        That said it doesn't bode well that they churned through two CxOs in that time

    • by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @08:27PM (#63383815)

      I been wondering where this was hiding. Even thou the bank didn't need to do stress testing and scenario testing, the Fed does a TON of it every time they consider rate changes. They do it to almost ALL the banks, no matter the size. It's how they partially determine who much to raise or lower the rate per quarter. If they raised the rate 2% in any quarter... it will easily kill off numerous banks around the world!

      It's not unusual to get these statements from the Fed; they put everyone against the most stringent rule sets. Even getting this many isn't abnormal... especially for banks not under full regs.

      But very concerning that once the reviewes showed horrible planning for the future, not enough restrictions were put in place. The Fed should have really pushed the bank to divest its customer base a bit to other banks... spread the risk to hold up the confidence and limit the damage, if not the risk, of a bank run.

      • The Fed should have really pushed the bank to divest its customer base a bit to other banks... spread the risk to hold up the confidence and limit the damage, if not the risk, of a bank run.

        Not sure that's a viable approach, because it would show anyone who was watching that the bank being told to divest its customer base was not a secure place for deposits, thus triggering the bank run one wants to avoid.

        • When rates were low, the bank would not have failed due to a run! They would have been able to sell assets at close to face value. The rise in interest rates (and corresponding drop in market value of bonds) made them insolvent. The bank was warned this would be the case and made no change. Had there been a run when rates were low, the bank would have been solvent and smaller and still here today.
        • Yes, that can still happen but far less of a chance. When you sell the depositor account to another, you also transfer the backing and reserves for those accounts. The point isn't to trade risk levels but to spread it out and mix it with less risk.

          That new owner can be healthy enough to ride out the underlying security maturity, or may have other securities to sell sooner if needed. That is the problem here, the securities needed to be prematurely sold... if they could be sold on the original schedule, thi

      • by mspohr ( 589790 )

        When you bribe enough politicians to lower the standards, you can get away with incompetent management and pay yourself a big "bonus" on the way out the door.

    • by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @08:45PM (#63383831)

      think prison sentences

      I think people forget that we have banking regulations. Because some "unelected federal bureaucracy" (or whatever some here on Slashdot like to call them), they get a chance to settle out of court and avoid their one strike. With regulations, we can only toss someone into jail if they violate it AND are found guilty in a court of law at least twice. Now, anything that any of these regulatory agencies really wants to put on the fast track for criminal prosecution, that has to be referred to the Department of Justice. The DOJ would then have to begin their own investigation into the matter and offer any recommendation and/or file to convene a grand jury. There is a catch in this. Sending it to the DOJ means that everything is stuck, that would mean all that money in the bank was stuck until the DOJ could determine how to handle it. Now maybe they tell the FDIC to deal and document, if it's something the DOJ hasn't done before, they have to ask the judge "mother may I?" And that can only happen after a grand jury finds a commission of crime, which all of that can only happen at the pre-scheduled calendar pace unless the DOJ files an emergency appeal. Which that's got a whole process in of itself.

      The reason you don't see a lot of people instantly going to jail is because a lot of these large complex systems do not fall under law but regulatory process. Regulatory process isn't law, so there is a very long process to go through before a regulatory violation can turn into a criminal violation. Usually, the public doesn't want to sit on the thing for a decade or in this case, there's no way anyone could sit on this for longer than a week.

      If you want harsher penalties and people going to jail. You can squarely blame Congress for the way they have written the law that grants the regulatory authority rather than outline actual criminal action. However, seeing how we're doing the whole EPA v West Virginia thing, if you want Congress to get serious about this, expect a few thousand pages of new law needing to be written. Because with the current Supreme Court, they've taken the whole major questions doctrine and basically indicated that "if Congress didn't explicitly say ABC, then ABD cannot be taken to mean ABC". That's the corner we've apparently wanted to paint ourselves into. If we want to address everything, we're going to need thousands upon thousands of new laws to move regulatory authority into statue, because someone wanted to goad SCOTUS into "the EPA's mandate is too broad!" I mean, look at the fallout from the EPA v WV case. Congress twenty-six days later added 300+ pages of new laws into the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because SCOTUS said, "the EPA's mandate is too broad". And the big question that took 300 pages to address was "is CO2 a thing the EPA can regulate?" So yes, we've got hundreds of new laws that go insanely out of their way to tell everyone that yes the EPA can indeed regulate CO2 and a couple of other gases for tens of thousands of industries. So yeah, you want insta go to jail for being a dumb banker and taking stupid risks? Easily will take tens of thousands of new laws to cover every aspect enough to where someone doesn't squirm their way out with the whole "you're being too vague" SCOTUS we've got right now.

    • Many other banks are stuck with long bonds to their neck, having failed to pull the stop-loss triggers that would have destroyed exec bonuses. Plenty of other banks... I think you will find out Trump and Co rolled back many of the inter-bank clearing regulations. Funds for 0.1% buy 10 year bonds and watch the money roll in. So you put everything and the kitchen sink into bonds. Interest rates rocket up, you are in Texas Hold'em and bluff stakes. Now that money which was re-loaned internationally has to gene
    • As I see it, a lot could be avoided if all normal deposits were guaranteed: then there would be no run to withdraw, and the only thing that would happen was that the stock price would fall, but no crash and uncertainty in the financial markets. That would have been a small price to pay compared to the risk for the world economy where much larger banks now have to be guaranteed anyway.
    • The only reason this story is coming out now is to perpetuate the myth of the all-seeing regulator who could fix everything if only we gave them more power.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Dude. It's not criminal to run your business poorly. Prison sentences is a bit harsh.
    • Much of this information *was* leaked if you read the bank's 10K. But despite the challenges the bank was more than solvent (they had enough money to pay depositors + their tier 1 capital requirement). The bank was warned that they would be in trouble if interest rates rose. But the bank wasn't in trouble. The bank failed to act. When interest rates rose, the regulators shut it down. This seems quite reasonable to me. At the time the bank was warned, interest rates were still low and the bank would h
      • Raising the question: when does culpable inaction come to be criminal? Or did lots of the executives have short selling positions so they have profited massively from its crash?

        • Hopefully somebody else can comment but I don't know. Was it culpable inaction? If the bank firmly believed that the fed would never raise rates, it would only be stupidity. Most firms prohibit employees from shorting their own company. But in this case the executives unloaded many shares which is similar but not exactly the same and there might be insider trading charges. That's not a part of the story where my comments would add anything. Hopefully someone jumps in.
  • But could do nothing (Score:5, Informative)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @05:55PM (#63383579) Homepage Journal
    Congress set the laws and limit of regulation. A few years ago congress reset limits so that banks of SVB size were no longer considered too big to fail and thus not subject to the full range of regulation, scrutiny, and consequences.

    I donâ(TM)t think this failure came as any surprise. The execs were selling stock, at least four million in the two weeks prior. I suspect that general knowledge of the weakness of the bank is what caused the bank run. The official story is that fake news caused a panic and the bank was an innocent victim. But that appears not to be the case.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by youngone ( 975102 )
      The official story might be that fake news caused a panic, but the spin I'm seeing in the media everywhere is that SVB spend millions in Washington on purchasing the regulations they wanted and are now paying the price.
      Or, rather, taxpayers are paying the price. Again.
    • Nope, relaxing of some of Frank-Dodd not relevant, you can look up Congressman Frank's NPR interview where he states would not have prevented SVB collapse. it's a meme liberal news media spew for Trump hate points

      • That's not really what he said in that interview at all. In fact he mostly tried to cover his own arse because he's on the board of Signature Bank.
        He really just tried to blame crypto.
        • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @09:24PM (#63383865)

          That is what he said. And what experts say.

          "
          ----- USA Today ---
          The changes in Dodd-Frank did not cause the failure of the banks, Thomas Hoenig, a distinguished senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas told USA TODAY.

          "The amendments were a bipartisan action to ease some of the burden on smaller regional banks," says Hoenig. "There was nothing in those changes that prevented the Fed Board of Governors from examining this bank, or questioning its growth rate, or criticizing its concentrations."

          The bankâ(TM)s management was incompetent and sales-oriented, he says.

          "Nothing kept the regulators from seeing this, certainly not the changes to Dodd-Frank," says Hoenig. "The issue that needs focus is that the industry is not over-capitalized. Thatâ(TM)s where the critics need to focus attention." -- USA Today

    • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @07:18PM (#63383685)

      The limits aren't really the issue. There was clearly a systemic problem in the way the firm managed risk and how it hedged its portfolio against fluctuating interest rates. It's classic poor governance rather than the result of a single rule change.

      Bond math isn't rocket science.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      The execs were selling stock, at least four million in the two weeks prior.

      To raise cash to cover their losses on devalued assets.

    • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @07:34PM (#63383711) Homepage

      The 2018 change to the threshold for a "systematically important financial institution" (SIFI) does mean that SVB was not automatically covered by the regulations for SIFIs -- but regulators could still [go.com] apply those rules if they chose to. And others say [cnn.com] the rule change wouldn't have mattered for SVB (search for "Richardson").

      • by fermion ( 181285 )
        Recall when the IRS tried to reign in corrupt right wing charities that were cheating donors. It was not an explicit mandate, just something the could do to help citizens avoid falling prey to citizens. Did not end well for the brave ITS employees who were trying to do more than the minimum.
    • by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @08:42PM (#63383827)

      For anyone thinking the execs did insider trading or anything illegal or even immoral... they didn't.

      The bank financial statements were pretty clear that rising interest rates were stressing the bank. Before the financials with material shortfall statement, people already knew that deposits and reserves were dwindling... you can see it in the quarterly statements.

      So as long as the execs didn't sell before the financial disclosure, they are fine. Normally you don't keep that disclosure so dagger like. It wasn't a large amount, but you would have still seen a "outlook good in procuring funding; waiting for ink to dry" type of accompaniment. Lacking that, enough people lost confidence to get a bank run rolling.

      The Execs clearly lost it too and cut their losses before they sunk with the ship. For any Exec who sold before the statement release, yeah, the Fed, Bankruptcy Court, & SEC will easily claw that back for reparations.

    • Except that the SEC isn't enforcing anything below massive thresholds, and hasn't been since before the dotcom crash. They are one of the means by which such insider information is leaked to other major stock buyers, not the means by which such limits are enforced.

    • Ok, not to big to fail, then why is government bailing it out? Only FDIC insured accounts should be covered, nothing else. Either you are too big to fail and subject to stricter regulations, or you are not too big to fail, subject to less regulations, but no bailout when you crash.

      Perhaps the government should also start a TBTF (Too Big To Fail) insurance to which all TBTF companies are expected to pay premiums for future bailouts, in addition to being subject to stricter regulations. Save the taxpayers
  • Thew regulator should have been able to save the bank, they knew early enough and were already involved. That this was not enough indicates the regulator does not have enough bite. This usually is a problem caused by stupid politicians.

  • Key takeaway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @07:27PM (#63383697) Homepage Journal

    The key takeaway here is that the government had known for nine months that the bank was at risk of failure, and could not, or did not take the steps necessary to prevent collapse.

    This does not restore my confidence in either the government or the banking system. What good does it do us for the government to know that a bank is about too fail if they can't or won't actually do anything about it?

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @09:05PM (#63383851)
      we had the laws in place to stop this prior to 2018... when they were repealed by a Republican run Congress and a few right wing Dems.

      One party is consistently in favor of deregulation, and consistently passes laws to that effect. Stop acting like there isn't a difference, and vote in primary elections for the Democratic party so you're not voting for Republicans with a "D" next to their name.
      • Problem is, it's really hard to put an "I did that!" sticker with Trump's face on a failed bank. Plus, since this bank primarily catered to corporate customers, its failure mostly just contributes to an overall feeling of malaise about the economy in the eyes of the general public. People notice things like higher grocery, rent, and utility prices; a bank failing out in California is just a headline you scroll past to get to the cat videos.

        You already know who'll be blamed for that (and I'm not referring

      • we had the laws in place to stop this prior to 2018...

        No we didn't. We had other laws in place, but not ones that would have prevented precisely this from happening. This has been debunked over and over again. Yeah SVB were dicks for lobbying to have those laws rescinded, but they didn't fail as a result of what the laws were covering.

        • You are wasting your time, just like I was wasting my time a week ago [slashdot.org]. Just like the other NPCs, he got his pre-programmed speech the day after the bank failed, and his parser doesn't understand any questions.

          It just doesn't matter that this theory was debunked by Tuesday [cnn.com]. It isn't a reasoned opinion that he can be reasoned out of. He'll just keep repeating it until the next NPC update gives him new lines.

      • Laws to stop what? A bank losing all of it's investors' money but no depositors' money? The regulators were watching the bank closely and stepped in the minute that the bank didn't meet requirements or, in other words, at exactly the right time. What else would you want?
    • by jezwel ( 2451108 )

      The key takeaway here is that the government had known for nine months that the bank was at risk of failure, and could not, or did not take the steps necessary to prevent collapse.

      Why should the government step in? Capitalism allows for failure of non-profitable business - I'm sure the IRS could point to thousands of failing businesses right now that won't have any government intervention to save them.

      This does not restore my confidence in either the government or the banking system. What good does it do us for the government to know that a bank is about too fail if they can't or won't actually do anything about it?

      You mean because the banks themselves lobbied to have their government regulations reduced, so the government no longer needs to intervene if they're going to fail? Sounds like an own goal to me.

      The root of the problem is that your lawmakers allowed this deregulation in the first p

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Why should the government step in? Capitalism allows for failure of non-profitable business.

        The business did fail. The investors lost all. The CxOs and board are all out. Even the stock options sold recently can be clawed back if the government wants to.
        Only the depositors are being made whole. The reason for that is to prevent a run on other banks in similar situations.
        That's the price to pay for a partial reserve banking system.

    • You are assuming that the goal is to protect the bank rather than to protect the depositors. Sure, the easiest way to protect the depositors would be to head off the bank failure in the first place, but if the bank investors insist on setting themselves on fire they will always find a way to do so. All you can do is get the depositors out of the way.

    • I'm at risk for defaulting on my mortgage. I mean what if there's a recession and I lose my job. I've made every payment on time. Should the bank foreclose proactively? The bank was *at risk* but the bank had enough assets to pay all depositors + the tier 1 reserve requirements. Banks are allowed to take that risk. The minute the bank lost enough that they didn't meet capital requirements, they got shut down. The regulators identified the risk, warned the bank, and stepped in at exactly the right time
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday March 19, 2023 @07:53PM (#63383743)
    first under Trump by removing all Dodd's Frank's provisions for 'medium size' banks and then by appointing that ***hole Jerome Powell to a second term. He's not just in charge of cranking interest rates and causing recessions, he's also the head banking regulator. Biden appointing him to another term is probably the worst thing he's done since the 80s.
    • Yes but the gutted regulations had nothing to do with SVB's failure since what SVB were doing was perfectly fine under previously regulations. SVB lobbied to have the regulations rescinded along with other banks largely in anticipation of future growth.

      Just because you bought a gun one day, and die from a bullet wound the day after doesn't mean you used that particular gun to shoot yourself.

  • Good news is that Corporations are people when it is convenient and they are not people when it is rich people / dealing with rich people / dealing with economy / donating to politicians / Too big to fail / or basically anyone else that is not John Smith walking down the street
  • October 2021 the stock was at an all time high of ~$750/share. A year later (and 4 months before failure) it was about a third of that at ~$230/share. Compared to other large banks like Wells Fargo (which doubled in value) and its not hard to see SVB was in trouble. Now, that doesn't indicate it was about to fail, but banks don't lose 2/3 of their value in a year while others maintain size or even do better without some underlying issues.

  • Economists have been saying for a long time that we "shouldn't be worried" about the US national debt. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/2... [cnbc.com] They say, among other things, that interest rates are low so borrowing is cheap, and they say that there is no safer creditor than the US government.

    That's all true, until it isn't. When interest rates go up, borrowing costs go up for the government too. Those costs eat into the budgets of what the government really wants to spend money on. At some tipping point (as with

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