The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have reportedly launched separate probes over Silicon Valley Bank's (SVB) collapse.
The probes will investigate the events resulting in the bank's shutdown and SVB officers' stock sales before the closure.
- SVB CEO Greg Becker and SVB CFO Daniel Beck sold $3.6M and $575,180 worth of stock and shares two weeks before the closure, respectively.
- The inquiries are in the early stages and may not lead to charges or allegations of wrongdoing.
- The agencies are expected to make a formal announcement about the investigations in the coming days.
- The Federal Reserve (Fed), the central banking system of the U.S., also recently started probing the reasons for SVB's collapse and how the bank was supervised and regulated.
- California-based SVB was shut down by the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation on March 10, marking the biggest U.S. bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008.
- The bank, providing banking services to several crypto and tech startups, was the 16th largest bank in the U.S.
- The closure became one of the three bank collapses within a week, alongside Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank.
