Many in the financial punditry class believe the move is necessary to prevent a chain reaction that could take down other big investment banks. There is plenty to be debated about the merits of that action, but it certainly does make it harder to accept that Americans are being forced to bail out millionaires when SVB has been grossly irresponsible with their own funds.
As it turns out, SVB was a massive donor to Black Lives Matter and other social justice causes, to the tune of nearly $74 million dollars. $73,450,000 to be more exact.
The figure comes from an extensive report dropped by the Claremont Institute on Tuesday. The report details $82 billion dollars in social justice/BLM investments by major American companies. SVB stands out as one of the larger donors, next to big donors like Apple ($100 million) and Comcast ($165 million). While at the top of the donation pool, those contributors do pale in comparison to donors like Blackrock ($810 million) and Citigroup ($1.1 billion). However, the group did pledge on their website to provide in total up to $11 billion dollars by 2026 for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and racial justice causes.
SVB executives explained on their website the turbulent racial atmosphere following the George Floyd killing and protests prompted them to expand “opportunities for dialogue,” a calling that doesn’t seem too have much concrete investment return, but ended up taking $74 million dollars out of bank coffers anyway.
Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Federalist that SVB’s failure on the heels of its left-wing activism “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.”
“Time after time we see the same pattern: companies that are the most concerned with ESG scores and woke politics do the worst jobs serving their customers,” Hild explained. “The rest of corporate America should learn from SVB’s failure now, before they are the next company to make headlines for comically poor management.”
The company’s Corporate Responsibility report leaned heavily on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) actions. Some of the report’s major concerns included:
