Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressing former First Republic Bank chief executive officer Michael Roffler for information on executives’ compensation and their lobbying for more lenient banking regulations in the wake of the bank’s failure earlier this week.
(Bloomberg) — Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressing former First Republic Bank chief executive officer Michael Roffler for information on executives’ compensation and their lobbying for more lenient banking regulations in the wake of the bank’s failure earlier this week.
Warren asserted “the primary cause” of the bank “appears to be complacency, incompetency and mismanagement by you and other bank executives” in a letter the senator released Thursday.
First Republic Bank became the second-largest bank to fail in US history on Monday when it was seized by regulators and JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to acquire it.
The bank’s collapse added to the turmoil and concerns around the US banking industry following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March.
Warren asked Roffler for a range of information, including when he became aware of problems at First Republic, how much the bank paid in executive bonuses and compensation over the last few years, details on stock sales, and lobbying efforts to roll back banking regulations in Congress.
“You owe your customers and the public an explanation for the decisions that resulted in the costly failure of your bank,” Warren wrote. That includes “the extent to which you and other bank executives profited even as the bank teetered towards collapse,” she added
Warren is a member of the Senate Banking Committee which is scheduled to hold a hearing on the banking turmoil later this month with Gregory Becker, the former chief executive officer of Silicon Valley Bank, and the former leaders of Signature Bank listed as witnesses.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.