'Justified anger': Senators target executives, regulators in SVB collapse

Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown said Tuesday he's planning legislation that would ratchet up penalties for executives at failed banks and ban them from the industry.

The Ohio Democrat announced the plan at Congress's first hearing on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Brown unleashed fierce criticism of the bank's executives but also slammed venture capitalists — its key clientele — for driving the run that took down the lender when they encouraged companies to pull out their money. Some of those investors later demanded that the government rescue SVB.

"Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, it appears that when there is a bank crash, there are no libertarians in Silicon Valley," Brown said.

Brown said the failure of SVB and Signature Bank earlier this month came down to "hubris, entitlement, greed."

"Once again, small businesses and workers feared they would pay the price for other people’s bad decisions," Brown said. "And we’re left with many questions—and justified anger—toward bank executives and boards, toward venture capitalists, toward federal and state bank regulators, and toward policymakers."