The chief executive and CFO of Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company have stepped down.
Gregory Becker, CEO of SVB Financial Group, resigned from that role April 19 and from the company’s board, according to a recent regulatory filing, while chief financial officer Daniel Beck left his job on April 18.
The company has not appointed a new CEO but has named Nicholas Grossi, of the business advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal, to serve as its “principal financial officer and principal accounting officer,” per the filing.
According to the filing, SVB Financial has also decided to postpone its annual shareholder meeting, initially scheduled for Thursday (April 27). No new date has been set.
SVB Financial hired Alvarez & Marsal to help guide it when it declared bankruptcy March 17, one week after Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by regulators in one of the worst banking failures in U.S. history.
Weeks later, the financial world continues to deal with the fallout of that collapse. As PYMNTS wrote last week, that collapse disproportionately affected regional banks, many of which saw their customers flee to larger lenders.
It’s part of the reason Truist Financial Corp. CFO Mike Maguire looked to reassure investors on an earnings call last week, saying his bank’s “disciplined focus on diversification” has resulted in “less risk than peers.”
After the collapse of SVB — the bank, not the parent company — shares of Truist have traded well below their fiscal year 2022 lows, while its earnings missed analyst estimates.
“[We are moving into 2023] with a keen focus and eye on operating leverage,” Truist Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers told investors, adding that realizing efficiencies via “digitization and automation” is definitely “on the table.”
Meanwhile, America’s credit unions are working to reassure their customers of their safety as public confidence in the banking sector remains shaken, Brian Scott, chief growth officer at credit union services organization PSCU, said in an interview with PYMNTS last week.
“There’s been a perception,” Scott said of credit unions, “that they’ve been in the same boat” as the banks that went under during the course of a few days.
It’s critical for credit unions (CUs) and community financial institutions to tell account holders that the failure of SVB — as well as Signature Bank — happened because they were focused on specific niches, and on billion-dollar players where credit unions are not that deeply focused.
“The businesses that the credit unions are focused on are more mom-and-pop shops,” Scott told PYMNTS.