Silicon Valley Bank ex-CEO Greg Becker spotted in Hawaii in ‘shorts and flip-flops’ amid banking collapse

Amid the Silicon Valley Bank collapse s ex-CEO, Greg Becker, was reportedly spotted in Hawaii with his wife, Marilyn Bautista, in their $3.1 million Maui townhouse, while customers scrambled for their money.

As per a NY Post article, the couple reportedly enjoyed a chauffeur-driven limo ride to San Francisco Airport on Monday and first-class tickets to Hawaii. The ex-CEO was also photographed sporting shorts and flip-flops while on a stroll through Lahaina.

Becker sold $3,578,652.31 in common stock just two weeks before SVB was shut down by federal regulators. This has brought scrutiny on the ex-CEO, who joined the bank as a loan officer in 1993 and led the expansion of the company to include four primary businesses serving the innovation sector.

Bloomberg reported, Becker sold $3.6 million of company stock under a trading plan less than two weeks before the firm disclosed extensive losses that led to its failure.

The sale of 12,451 shares on Feb. 27 was the first time in more than a year that Becker had sold shares in parent company SVB Financial Group, according to regulatory filings. He filed the plan that allowed him to sell the shares on Jan. 26.

SVB, established in 1983, was the 16th biggest bank in America and provided services to almost half of the venture-backed technology companies in the country. However, after the bank's closure, nearly $175 billion of customer deposits are now under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC has created a new bank, the National Bank of Santa Clara, to hold all the assets of Silicon Valley Bank.

The bank's collapse came after a dramatic 48 hours, during which the high-tech lender's share price plummeted amid a run on deposits by concerned customers. The bank's failure is now the biggest retail banking failure since the global financial crisis.