CEO Risk-Culture, Bank Stability and the Case of the Silicon Valley Bank

Abstract

We explore the link between CEO risk-culture and bank stability. Using textual analysis, we construct novel bank CEO risk-culture indicators by analysing Earning Calls transcripts (EC) of 160 US Bank Holding Companies (BHC) for the period between 2002 and 2023. We illustrate and discuss our findings using the case of the recently collapsed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). We observe a weaker emphasis on governance by SVB in comparison to the benchmark sample. Despite the recognition of portfolio problems, CEO’s tone in SVB indicates that regulatory compliance and risk strategy would have potentially mitigate these risks. We also show an alignment between CEO risk-culture of SVB and other banks’ CEOs with the highest uninsured deposits, including the later collapsed First Republic Bank (FRB). We observe that two global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) also exhibit similar CEO risk-culture to SVB and FRB.

Keywords: Risk culture, Bank CEO risk-culture, Machine Learning, Text Analysis, Earning Calls