Couple of stories - first, from Fortune:
Silicon Valley Bank’s CEO sold $3.6 million of stock in potentially ‘problematic’ transaction days before historic bank failure
Silicon Valley Bank Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker sold $3.6 million of company stock under a trading plan less than two weeks before the firm disclosed extensive losses that led to its failure.
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.
Problematic does not begin to describe it... And this story from Forbes:
Wells Fargo Customers Report Missed Paychecks Due To Apparent Glitch
Numerous Wells Fargo online banking users complained of not seeing scheduled paychecks hit their accounts Friday, which the bank blames on a technical issue that does not appear connected to Thursday’s bank stock crash.
Yeah - a glitch. WF has a history of playing fast and loose - from the same Forbes article:
Wells Fargo has been plagued with a series of legal troubles over the past several years, including a fake accounts scandal where employees created millions of checking and savings accounts for real customers without their consent to meet quota goals set by top executives. The company agreed to pay a $3 billion fine for the fake accounts in 2020 and former CEO John Stumpf was banned from ever working in the banking industry again.
It is also worth noting that Wells Fargo is one of the top Mortgage Lenders for the US (including JP Morgan and BofA). Third - from Housing Wire:
Mortgage volumes collapse for Wells Fargo, JPMorgan in Q4 2022
Like its nonbank competitors, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America operated in a highly challenging mortgage market in 2022. But quarterly earnings released on Friday also revealed that the top depository lenders struggled more than the overall mortgage market in the final three months of the year, perhaps an omen of what’s to come.
“The fourth quarter results were weaker than we expected,” a team of mortgage lending analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a report.
So the Biden Inflation is causing lending rates to soar so people are putting of buying houses and the market is crashing. Just wonderful... We really need to get some adults in the room soon. Get things back on an even keel...
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