A U.S. district judge has prevented the successor to Silicon Valley Bank's parent from advancing a $1.71 billion claim against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) related to the March 2023 collapse of the bank, one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history.
In a 206-page opinion issued on Friday, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman of San Jose, California, determined that a trust which assumed the holding company’s claims is answerable for the former executives’ strategic decisions to concentrate investments in long-term government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
Judge Freeman’s ruling followed a 12-day bench trial. She concluded that the bank’s chief financial officer, treasurer and other officers acted negligently by adopting excessive interest rate and liquidity risk positions, and that these choices were encouraged by the board of directors.
"The holding company chose to run the bank through holding company officers in accordance with the global, enterprise-wide policies, limits, and metrics that the holding company established," Freeman wrote. "Having made this choice, it must live with the consequences."
The judge rejected the trust’s contention that the directors were shielded by a business-judgment defense for authorizing the investment strategy. She also dismissed the argument that losses arose solely because the FDIC later sold securities at a loss.
Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse occurred after rising interest rates produced at least $4.52 billion of losses in the bank’s investment portfolio. Those losses prompted a depositor run that overwhelmed the institution. Many of the bank’s deposits were uninsured, and the bank’s failure disrupted numerous technology startups that held accounts there.
Before its failure, Silicon Valley Bank reported approximately $209 billion in assets. The parent holding company has since been succeeded by SVB Financial Trust, which took over the holding company’s claims that were part of the litigation.
The FDIC is separately pursuing legal action against 17 former executives and directors of the bank, including former Chief Executive Gregory Becker, seeking recovery of billions of dollars for alleged gross negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty.
The court decision places responsibility for the bank’s strategic investment choices squarely on the holding company structure and its officers, and it resolves a major claim the trust had sought to bring against the FDIC in connection with the bank’s collapse.
Lawyers for the trust did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. The FDIC and its lawyers likewise did not immediately respond to similar requests.
Context within U.S. banking failures: The opinion notes the relative scale of recent failures. Washington Mutual is identified as the largest traditional U.S. bank or thrift by assets to fail when it collapsed in 2008. First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank rank as the second, third, and fourth largest failures respectively.