Merit issue: Just one guy on the failed Silicon Valley Bank's board knew anything about investment banking

Before its collapse Friday, wokesterism surrounded Silicon Valley Bank like a miasma.

The wokesterly attentiveness didn't per se destroy that mid-sized bank, given that most banks play these games and the big ones are very loud about it.

As I noted earlier, Johns Hopkins University professor of economics, Steve Hanke, put his finger on the problem more precisely in an email:

[T]he real SVB issue was terrible banking and risk management that resulted in a massive duration mismatch between SVB's liabilities (read: deposits) and its assets (read: long-dated bonds). The mismatch was stupidly not hedged. SVB was a poorly run bank, a disaster waiting to happen. Any regulator worth his salt should have seen this coming long ago.

Apparently, they didn't know how to run a bank. They failed to understand their unique risk profile, they failed to plan for it through hedging their risk, which could have been done, and they failed to even hire a risk manager for most of 2022. They just did woke stuff, virtue-signaling for the political crowd, and donated to Democrats.

Now it comes to light from the Daily Mail that they really didn't know much about banking at all:

Just one member of Silicon Valley Bank's board of directors had a career in investment banking, while the others were major Democratic donors, it has been revealed.
Tom King, 63, was appointed to the board in September after previously serving as the CEO of investment banking at Barclay's. He has had 35 years of experience in investment banking.

But he is the only one on the board with a career in the financial industry, while others are a former Obama administration employee, a prolific contributor to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even a Hillary Clinton mega-donor who prayed at a Shinto shrine when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.

Now it's pretty obvious what the results of that was. Just one of them knew about banking and risk management. No wonder they couldn't manage the bank. They had a merit problem in their top management, with characters hired for their political connections. One of them, Mary J. Miller, was an actual Obama administration official.

Under ordinary circumstances they could probably get away with bumbling. The Biden hyperinflation and the inevitable interest rate hikes required active and skillful adjustments. The Board as described would have thought the Biden spending spree, woke energy policies, etc. were wonderful.

I do have to wonder whether SVB had expertise in the hired employee category. Board Members can add valuable oversight, or they can be political connectors, or rainmakers, or worthless bagmen.

Had a boss on the board of Robert Half Employment. He said it was a very interesting board, the members were actual experts in their fields, insurance, finance, legal. All were top people in their industry and helped with the questions and guidance the executives needed to help make their decisions. He said it was an unusual arrangement and one of the best boards he had served on.

QUESTION:

IF all those board members & employees got bonuses————

IF all those board members sold so many millions of $$$$$$$$ of bank stock-—

WHAT BANK DID THEY DEPOSIT THOSE FUNDS INTO???

The 2 idiot banks that failed had zero to do with the national economy. SVC and Signature were loaded down with politically connected Dem Wokies in management and on the board that knew nothing about banking that catered to one trick industries, crypto that has fallen out of favor and SV tech. Barney Frank’s bank is next to go. We need banking legislation that requires that the majority of bank board of directors must be from the banking industry.

The articles and comments here remind me of an essay on the functioning of corporation boards published in 1957 by the famous British economic humorist, C. Northcote Parkinson (of “Parkinson’s Law” fame).

Below is a link to a pdf file containing the famous Parkinson’s Law essay and other essays on administration. The essay I am referring to is the third in the book. It is called “HIGH FINANCE, OR THE POINT OF VANISHING INTEREST“ and starts on page 11 of the pdf. It’s short; being just a few pages in length.

http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf

Although somewhat dated (to say the least), the essays are still humorous and worth reading because their subject, human behavior is business/administrative settings is predictably and stubbornly consistent, regardless of the specific setting details.

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