By ZEKE MILLER and FATIMA HUSSEIN (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday referred to as on Congress to permit regulators to impose more durable penalties on the executives of failed banks, together with clawing again compensation and making it simpler to bar them from working within the trade.
Biden needs the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to have the ability to drive the return of compensation paid to executives at a broader vary of banks ought to they fail, and to decrease the edge for the regulator to impose fines and bar executives from working at one other financial institution.
He referred to as on Congress to grant the FDIC these powers after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank despatched shockwaves by way of the worldwide banking trade.
“Strengthening accountability is an important deterrent to prevent mismanagement in the future,” Biden mentioned in a press release. “Congress must act to impose tougher penalties for senior bank executives whose mismanagement contributed to their institutions failing.”
Currently the FDIC can solely take again the compensation of executives on the largest banks within the nation, and different penalties on executives require “recklessness” or appearing with “willful or continuing disregard” for his or her financial institution’s well being. Biden needs Congress to permit the regulator to impose penalties for “negligent” executives — a decrease authorized threshold.
Congress has already begun to deal with the aftermath of the financial institution failures.
On Friday, the House Financial Services Committee’s prime Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, mentioned in a letter to regulators that whereas she is crafting laws to offer regulators extra authority, “it is critical that your agencies act now to investigate these bank failures and use the available enforcement tools you have to hold executives fully accountable for any wrongful activity.”
The Justice Department, Security and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, the California state regulator of Silicon Valley Bank and a number of other congressional committees have introduced some type of investigation into the financial institution failure.
Additionally, a gaggle of Senate Democrats on Thursday launched the Deliver Executive Profits on Seized Institutions to Taxpayers Act, which might claw again income made by financial institution executives on the sale of shares and compensation bonuses earned inside 60 days of a financial institution failure, amongst different issues.
And Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced laws this week to strengthen the SEC’s potential to crack down on violations of securities legal guidelines.
The White House highlighted stories that Silicon Valley Bank CEO Gregory Becker offered $3 million price of shares within the financial institution within the days earlier than its collapse, saying Biden needs the FDIC to have the authority to go after that compensation.
The shuttering of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later has revived unhealthy recollections of the monetary disaster that plunged the United States into the Great Recession about 15 years in the past.
Over the weekend the federal authorities, decided to revive public confidence within the banking system, moved to guard the entire banks’ deposits, even those who exceeded the FDIC’s $250,000 restrict per particular person account.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who chairs the Banking Committee, welcomed Biden’s name for congressional motion, stating in an e-mail that his committee “shall be taking a look at all of the methods we are able to shield working households’ cash from dangerous bets that didn’t repay in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street.
“That includes holding accountable the executives who ran this bank into the ground and the regulators tasked with overseeing them, and it includes working to reform our laws to better protect workers, small businesses, and taxpayers from corporate greed.”
John Core, an accounting professor who makes a speciality of govt compensation and company governance, questioned whether or not growing the authority of regulators was the precise transfer, since “in the case of Silicon Valley, it’s not yet even clear who is to blame” for the financial institution’s collapse.
“So many people think it was a regulatory failure, or it was because of rapid increases in interest rates due to inflation,” he mentioned.
Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that advocates for more durable monetary rules, mentioned the White House was proper to encourage Congress to behave.
“Regulators simply must have a full arsenal to severely punish faithless, irresponsible and reckless bank executives, officers and directors,” Kelleher mentioned.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
