SVB CEO Greg Becker cashed out $2M just before the collapse | Hacker News Reader

SVB CEO Greg Becker cashed out $2M just before the collapse

marketwatch.com

47 pointsmarymkearney24 comments

He has been selling blocks of shares since 2018 [1] like any other executive aware that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.

According to the most recent SEC insider sale filing, he still owns about 100,000 shares in the bank. If he was that cunny...why won't he have sold them? Doesn't absorb him of carelessness in running the bank, but this is clickbait for the ignorant and perpetually angry.

1- https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/ciks=0001259867&entityNam...

> why won't he have sold them?

To make the case for "hey it’s not that" if needed, for example?

No need to attribute to malice when sheer incompetence can explain it.

Dunno about that, I feel like this dichotomy is too often repeated to cover the original malice in the first place. I strongly doubt that those people got to where they were by being that incompetent.

You used a word I've never seen, in the phrase "If he was that [...]"

I looked it up, and I really doubt you meant that word. Curious what you did mean. Was it "canny"?

(As an ardent Wordle player, I'm always on the lookout for new five-letter words.)

I think they meant cunning.

Oh yes. Just searched the meaning of “cunny” and went oops, no no, not that word.

I made the mistake of searching that word, I don't recommend it.

It appears as though he sold exactly the number of shares required to cover the cost of exercising options that were about to expire with his after-tax proceeds. This does not seem to me to be a nefarious transaction.

Probably not nefarious. It's still annoying that the big guys can make millions while running a company into the ground.

To be clear, he likely has millions of shares of stock in SVB that are now worth exactly $0. He could end up being personally liable for SVB employee’s pay.

In general, I too hate when the “rich people” win despite screwing up. This doesn’t appear to be that sort of situation.

The sales were part of a prearranged executive stock sale plan, known as a 10b5-1 program, that Becker filed with the SEC... Jan. 26

seriously, this is the cheapest clickbait and fortunately nobody important is making a big story out of this.

You really don’t think he knew this was coming six weeks ago?

He has been regularly selling stock for years

Here are the SEC records which are public records:

https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/ciks=0001259867&entityNam...

I'm sure he knew things were in trouble (seems like they knew there was trouble for probably the past year or so) but I'm equally sure he thought the situation was salvageable probably up until the moment the FDIC walked in the door and maybe even now he thinks it could have been saved if they hadn't intervened.

Everyone else could see his plan to sell for the last six weeks.

It was "prearranged" by one month. This honestly just demonstrates how easy it is to game 10B5-1 plans.

I submitted this guy's newsletter separately, but it appears that SVB also lacked a Chief Risk Officer for most of 2022 and failed to explicitly disclose that until March 8 (i.e. two days ago).[1] It all looks pretty shady.

[1]: https://nongaap.substack.com/p/sivb-held-to-mortem-governanc... (submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35098617)

Yes, this, thanks. The missing Chief Risk Officer is an issue. It's not necessarily nefarious, but the optics aren't great either.

Edited to not repeat what you said. :)

There was a more recent transaction: $3.6M on Feb. 27, "the first time in more than a year that Becker had sold shares in parent company SVB Financial Group." So, update "6 weeks ago" to "11 days ago," does it look different? Maybe.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/svb-chief...

jail

It’s like saying so-and-so ate bread 48 hours before they got a heart attack.

No, it's like saying that it's ok that if you're rich enough you deserve to be first in line for heart transplants in the eventuality that you have a heart attack.

How does that follow? The guy probably cashes out that amount every quarter. So when there is an event like this of course you will find he cashed out what to us little people is a huge amount of money.

If it's a one-off then yea it's suspicious.

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