Tester tells Fed to ‘claw back’ bonuses from Silicon Valley Bank execs | Hacker News Reader

Tester tells Fed to ‘claw back’ bonuses from Silicon Valley Bank execs

thehill.com

58 pointsevo_98 comments

"Tester was one of the leading Democrats to team with Senate GOP in the 2018 deregulation of Silicon Valley Bank. SVB failed because of that deregulation, and the government bailed it out. One weekend later, Tester heads to the valley to reap his reward." https://twitter.com/alex_sammon/status/1635721023235424293

"@JonTester is raising money in Silicon Valley tonight." https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/163529734392169676...

Executives cashing out their stock right before their company fails seems pretty self-evidently bad. Captains go down with their ships, they shouldn’t be the first people on the lifeboat.

TFA is about bonuses, not stock. Stock sales were (as is usual) automated and scheduled. Executives simply cannot have discretionary "day of", impromptu kind of stock sales.

But even the bonuses were on a scheduled calendar.

That said, it's possible they kept the ship afloat just a little longer, to make sure those payments occurred first. /Then/ they took on the risk of a cap raise. I'm not saying that happened. I haven't studied it closely enough.

For me what's more worrisome is the incestuous relationships.

In this particular case, the stock sales before collapse were 'scheduled' just weeks before the sale, as opposed to many normal circumstances when it's scheduled months or even years in advance:

"The sale of 12,451 shares on Feb. 27 was the first time in more than a year that Becker had sold shares in parent company SVB Financial Group, according to regulatory filings. He filed the plan that allowed him to sell the shares on Jan. 26." [1]

[1] https://fortune.com/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-ceo-greg-...

Good. Claw back the sold stock value as well from top execs.

It won’t make a drop, but it’s more than these corrupt/stupid banking execs got in 2008.

I disagree, that sounds dumb. It would set precedent for failing companies with moderately good financials to just throw in the towel early and get away with not paying employees for their last month of service. The closer we get to employment contracts that are "here's your paycheck, but if someone on social media doesn't like us we'll need that back in 30 days" the closer we get to becoming a mafia that ends up hurting the weakest first and extending the moats of large businesses infinitely.

What are bonuses paid for?

"The closer we get to employment contracts that are "here's your paycheck, but if someone on social media doesn't like us we'll need that back in 30 days" the closer we get to becoming a mafia that ends up hurting the weakest first and extending the moats of large businesses infinitely."

Alternate theory: there is not a uniquely slippery slope between limiting the compensation for banking professionals at a failed institution and fascism.

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