Insiders at $SIVB Sold >$4M in Stock just Weeks before it Crashed

3 executives sold over $4M in stock just weeks before $SIVB crashed and their Chief Risk Officer sold 75% of her stock and quit in April 2022. Then SIVB went the rest of 2022 without a Chief Risk Officer while their company plummeted toward failure.

Links to the executive trades in comments.

CEO Greg Becker sold $3.57M worth of stock (12% of his total) for over $2.2M in profits just a week before the bank failed.

CFO Daniel Beck sold $575k worth of stock (32% of his total) but lost over $400k on the trade since most of the stock options he purchased were granted in 2021 when the stock price was skyrocketing (see his profile and trade history here).

CMO Michelle Draper sold almost $300k worth of stock (25% of her total) for a profit of nearly $120k.

But the most egregious insider shenanigan is that the Chief Risk Officer dumped 75% of her stock in December of 2021 when the stock was near an all-time high of $688 per share. Four months later, she was officially no longer working at SIVB. This is already a major red flag, but it gets even worse. SIVB never publicly announced this until March 8, 2023. They also didn’t hire a new Chief Risk Officer until January 2023, meaning they had no Chief Risk Officer for most of 2022 (which may also be illegal). h/t to nongaap on Twitter for an awesome write-up about the Chief Risk Officer situation

So not only did three executives sell millions of dollars in stock within a month of the bank failure, but the Chief Risk Officer dumped 75% of her shares and left the company while the stock was near an all-time high. Then the company didn’t announce that she left until almost a year later AND spent 8 months of 2022 without a Chief Risk Officer while the company hurtled toward oblivion.