Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse marked one of the largest bank failures in the United States. Now, over the past few days, several red flags have surfaced and multiple agencies have been looking into them. For instance, the SEC is now investigating Silicon Valley Bank executives’ stock sales prior to its failure.
A new database from the Claremont Institute has revealed the bank donated $73.45 million to the Black Lives Matter Movement and other related social causes.
Also Read: SEC Investigating Silicon Valley Bank Executives Stock Sales Prior to Collapse
Silicon Valley Bank’s initiatives
Silicon Valley Bank reportedly pledged to augment its commitment to “diversity, equipment, and inclusion (DEI)” in the workplace in 2020. Notably, that was the time the U.S. was in the midst of racial unrest following the death of George Floyd under police custody.
Fox News indicated that a report from August 2020, highlighted around 2/3rd of the bank’s workforce met the “diversity” criteria. Alongside, another report that year lauded the bank’s achievements in supporting minorities.
In fact, in an introductory letter to the report, CEO Greg Becker said that the bank acclaimed employee matching programs that focused on “pandemic response, social justice, sustainability, and supporting women, Black and Latinx emerging talent, and other underrepresented groups.”
Talking to The Federalist, Will Hild—the Executive Director of Consumers’ Research—said that SVB’s failure on the heels of its left-wing activism “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling, instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.” He added,
“Time after time we see the same pattern: companies that are the most concerned with ESG scores and woke politics do the worst jobs serving their customers. The rest of corporate America should learn from SVB’s failure now, before they are the next company to make headlines for comically poor management.”