How Silicon Valley Bank actually failed (think “Governance”)

Here’s a note from Microsoft’s Matthew Sekol about his article:

Over the past few days, the anti-ESG crowd has latched on to SVB’s ESG report and their DEI efforts in a flood of negative comments about distractions and focus.

As I’m sure you’ve read by now, it was a combination of a high-risk bet, high-interest rates, and a spooked VC community that quickly caused a run on the bank, resulting in FDIC receivership.

The more I read about SVB, the more I became convinced that ESG took them down, but not in the way that the anti-ESG crowd thinks (mostly because they don’t understand the acronym). While the CSR platitudes and non-material philanthropic efforts were in the report, Governance played its role in the end. And nothing gets by Governance.

Here’s an ESG look at what happened at SVB as I’ve written about in my Substack article.