Inquiry into the failure of Silicon Valley Bank: details of the investigation.

More than seven months have passed since the Federal Reserve closed Silicon Valley Bank and arranged for its sale to North Carolina firm First Citizens Bank. Since then, a small committee has been working to determine exactly what happened.

After the Federal Reserve released its initial report in April that cited failures of SVB's senior management and board of directors, a small committee representing shareholders of SVB's former parent bank, SVB Financial Group, in its ongoing bankruptcy proceedings has been laboring for months to locate all documents and communications from SVB's senior executives, consultants and vendors who may have relevant information, according''to hundreds of bankruptcy filings made this year and reviewed by Fortune magazine.

The committee anxiously filed requests for information from everyone from McKinsey, Curinos and BlackRock - which developed reports for the company - to former SVB consultant Ernst & Young. According to bankruptcy documents, a request for information was also filed with Goldman Sachs, which helped SVB with a proposed capital increase in March 2023 and eventually purchased SVB's portfolio of securities.

And so this week, bankruptcy judge Martin Glenn authorized the committee to obtain communications and documents from 11 other people who held senior positions at SVB, including the former head of enterprise risk management, chief compliance officer for U.S. regulatory''s requirements, treasurer and director of liquidity risk management. The Committee has sent detailed requests, asking for information regarding everything from what SVB management has talked about as "Project Phoenix" (an internal reference to discussions of potential bond sales) to information about the firing of SVB's head of risk.

"We understand why the Committee is asking questions of various companies that may have worked for SVB in the past. As their review continues, we will answer their questions as appropriate," a Curinos spokeswoman said in a statement to Fortune. BlackRock declined to comment. McKinsey, E&Y and Goldman Sachs did not return a response to a request for comment before filing''publications.

The main purpose of the committee's ongoing investigation is to make "informed decisions" about the fate of bankruptcy assets, and to identify what "claims should be settled, waived or otherwise provided for in the plan," according to the committee's original motion to the judge for subpoena power.

In a report earlier this year, the Federal Reserve placed much of the blame for the bank's failure on the bank's board of directors and senior management, describing "a pattern of failing to manage key interest rates and liquidity," as well as details including how the bank''paid executive directors and senior staff annual performance bonuses on the very day the regulators handed the bank over to nationalization. Perhaps this committee will conclude that other parties or individuals also bear some of the responsibility. In the meantime, the committee has enough documents to continue its work indefinitely.

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