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And the $80 bill was about 40% of their assets. And their depositors are all businesses who will move the money out fast because it's not insured over 250k.


Yeah, this is all very odd. What the hell happened there?

In retrospect, the Chief Risk Officer leaving and not being replaced immediately was a bad sign: https://fortune.com/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-chief-ris...


That's a good find...

100% speculation: the CRO told them loading up on long term bonds was crazy, and that they'd just have to eat lower earnings. The CEO/CFO disagreed, and the CRO didn't want to have any part of it. Hindsight is 20/20, but... this really was a disaster waiting to happen.


Not completely sure about that:

"A risk officer typically anticipates and manages regulatory, operational, competitive or other risks faced by a firm."

That looks like _non-financial_ risks. If that was the role of the CRO at SVB, the risk for this event probably should have been with the CFO?


“Operational” at a bank includes financial risks.


I know of at least one large European bank where it explicitly doesn't.




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