A year ago, Greg Becker was the CEO of one of the most successful banks in the Silicon Valley area, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The bank was valued at $40 billion last year. Now, Becker is part of the biggest retail banking failure story since the global financial crisis in 2008. SVB is a subsidiary of SVB Financial Group, a publicly traded financial services company that focuses on providing banking and financial services to technology and life science companies, venture capitalists, and private equity firms.
The bank collapsed after a tumultuous week that saw its parent company’s share price fall by over 66 percent. All the while, SVB was experiencing a bank run that forced the bank to try and raise $2.25 billion to cover its deposit obligations. The bank was forced to look for capital after it had to sell its treasury bonds at a $1.8 billion loss following the crash of bond prices over the past year.
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Becker, 54, oversaw the bank through the crisis and on Friday, shared a heartfelt message with the bank’s employees after it collapsed. Calling the previous 48 hours “incredibly difficult”, Becker acknowledged that the bank had collapsed.
“It's with an incredibly heavy heart that I'm here to deliver this message,” he said in a video seen by Reuters. “I can't imagine what was going through your head and wondering, you know, about your job, your future.”
Becker, who has been with SVB since 1993, held various leadership positions before becoming the CEO in 2011. He was part of the bank during the dot-com bubble crash and the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Under his leadership, SVB saw tremendous growth and success.
Becker described his first few years at the bank as “the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.”
“We took losses. It was a challenging time for us... I look back on it fondly. I learned a lot about the institution. I learned a lot about how to lend money.”
The executive was also responsible for expanding the bank's services into global commercial banking, venture capital and credit investing, private banking and wealth management, and investment banking. Becker also co-founded SVB Capital - SVB Financial Group’s investment arm.
A graduate of Indiana University, he holds a bachelor's degree in business. Becker also served on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, before departing the board effective on Friday, after news broke of SVB's collapse.
Called the “champion of the innovation economy” by SVB, Becker also held other positions being the Chair of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group from 2014 to 2017 and a member of the US Commerce Department's Digital Economy Board of Advisors from 2016 to 2017.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
First Published: Mar 11, 2023 3:04 PM IST
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