Senator Warren on Former SVB CEO: ‘There needs to be a full investigation of insider trading’

Executives from shuttered Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank testified before the Senate Banking Committee about their banks' failures. Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Yahoo Finance to discuss her questioning of the executives.

The Senator has been critical of former Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker, who cashed out stock and options just days before the bank's failure. When asked about the sale, Sen. Warren told Yahoo Finance “there needs to be a full investigation of insider trading for Mr. Becker.”

Senator Warren then called Becker’s judgment “laughable,” especially after he claimed that he did not have knowledge of "what was really happening" ahead of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.

Watch the full interview with Jennifer Schonberger here.

Key video moments:

00:00:30 On a potential investigation into former SVB CEO Greg Becker

00:00:57 On former SVB CEO's Greg Becker’s judgment

00:01:35 On the role of Congress

Video transcript

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: Silicon Valley Bank's former CEO Becker and the board knew about these 31 regulatory infractions when he sold stock options just 11 days before SVB failed. When asked about this in testimony, he did not think that he was in possession of material non-public information, even though he had not disclosed that to the public. Your thoughts on this. Do you think Mr. Becker committed insider trading?

ELIZABETH WARREN: Look, it is clear to me that there is enough that was said in this hearing today that there needs to be a full investigation of insider trading for Mr. Becker. But I just want to underscore here that one of the remarks at today's hearing from the CEO was to say, well, in my judgment, it was good management running the bank. And you just want to, say your judgment is just laughable here.

The idea that you can just sit there in your full, straight, and starched way and say that, yeah, you actually blew a bank up. A bank that had a lot of business. A bank that was getting all kinds of warnings from the regulators that you had taken on too much risk.

And then want to claim that you use good judgment in running that bank. And then want to turn around and say, but you didn't have any knowledge about what was really happening when it comes to terms of insider trading. Look, the bottom line here, it's all about how could they boost short-term profits, then take out money for themselves personally, and then keep all that money when the bank blew up. And that's the part Congress has got to put a stop to.