US regulators charged with overseeing Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse this month said Wednesday that they shared in the blame for its rapid failure, after it took excessive interest-rate risk.
“I think that any time you have a bank failure like this, bank management clearly failed, supervisors failed and our regulatory system failed,” the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision Michael Barr told the House Financial Services Committee.
“I think we as the regulators of the institution had responsibility,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair Martin Gruenberg said during the hearing, while also blaming SVB’s management for its failure.
Barr, Gruenberg and Treasury under secretary for domestic finance Nellie Liang were on Capitol Hill for their second day of Congressional hearings on the dramatic failure of the Californian lender.
SVB’s collapse earlier in March following a bank run sparked a broader sell-off of banking stocks by concerned investors which led to the fall of another regional lender, Signature Bank, and the merger under pressure of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse.
Wednesday’s hearing comes a day after Senators accused regulators of failing to do enough to prevent Silicon Valley Bank’s fall, despite knowing it was over-exposed to the risk of rising interest rates.
