REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
- Insiders at Signature Bank offloaded $100 million of its stock in the 3 years leading up to the crypto-focused lender's collapse, the WSJ reported.
- Those who sold the shares included the bank's chairman, former CEO and his successor, according to the report.
- Signature's collapse marked the third-largest bank failure in US history after SVB's implosion.
While the failed Signature Bank was pivoting its business in recent years to become more crypto-focused, some top executives were slashing their stakes in the company, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Insiders at the lender offloaded $100 million of its stock in the 3 years leading up to its collapse last month in what was the third-largest bank failure in the US after Silicon Valley Bank folded up just days before.
About half of those sales were by Signature's chairman Scott Shay, the bank's former chief executive officer, as well as his successor, the WSJ reported. These executives were all part of the board committee that oversaw the crypto-focused bank's risk profile, it added.
Insiders at the bank cashed in $70 million from share sales in 2021, doubling the amount offloaded from the year before, according to the newspaper. Signature bank's shares surged 140% in 2021, boosted by an uptick in deposits thanks to the large inflows into the cryptocurrency industry at the time, the report said.
The bank was seized by regulators in New York on March 12, following the failure of SVB and Silvergate Bank.