WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The nation\u2019s top financial regulator is asserting that Silicon Valley Bank\u2019s own management was largely to blame for the bank\u2019s failure earlier this month and says the Federal Reserve will review whether a 2018 law that weakened stricter bank rules also contributed to its collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSVB\u2019s failure is a textbook case of mismanagement,\u201d Michael Barr, the Fed\u2019s vice chair for supervision, said in written testimony that will be delivered Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barr pointed to the bank\u2019s \u201cconcentrated business model,\u201d in which its customers were overwhelmingly venture capital and high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. He also contends that the bank failed to manage the risk of its bond holdings, which lost value as the Fed raised interest rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Silicon Valley was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on March 10 in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Late Sunday, the FDIC said that First Citizens Bank, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, had agreed to buy about one third of Silicon Valley\u2019s assets \u2014 about $72 billion \u2014 at a discount of about $16.5 billion. The FDIC said its deposit insurance fund would take a $20 billion hit from its rescue of SVB, a record amount, in part because it agreed to backstop all deposits at the bank, including those above a $250,000 cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n