As Silicon Valley Bank was heading for a financial iceberg, new reports make it seem that the only risk assessment officer on board was focused on making sure the deck chairs were painted in rainbow colors.
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the bank did not even have a top risk assessment official from April 2022 until January 2023, which by chance was also the month two top officials set plans in motion to dump large amounts of stock. In January, Kim Olson was hired.
The bank collapsed Friday in the second-largest collapse in U.S. banking history.
Meanwhile Jay Ersapah, the chief risk officer for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, who calls herself a “queer person of color from a working-class background,” was busy with a “pride” campaign and creating “safe spaces” for staff, the Mail reported.
The website Outstanding listed Ersapah in its 100 LGTB Future Leaders because she was “instrumental in initiating the organization’s first ever global ‘safe space catch-up,’ supporting employees in sharing their experiences of coming out. “
“Jay created the first month-long SVB EMEA Pride campaign, involving an awareness video with representatives of the firm’s LGTBQ+ communities and allies across the Executive, Board, Stonewall, and SVB UK’s LGBTQ+ charity partner,” it said, adding that she was working to “promote LGBTQ+ best practices for SVB’s external clients.”
Other activities included ‘”Lesbian Visibility Day” and “Trans Awareness Week,” the award notice said.
Others were not as inclined to gush.
“The collapse of SVB bank is the second largest bank collapse in U.S. history. It’s stock price lost 90 percent of its value in less than 48 hours. Most of the depositors and their deposits are uninsured. People are going to lose billions. Just who was in charge of this place?” Paul Tucker wrote on Facebook.
“The Board of Directors is filled with diversity hires who are there because of their woke credentials. They all have pronouns in their bios, which are filled with corporate newspeak.”
“The Head of Financial Risk and Model Risk Management was this nutbag: Jay Ersapah. This is what happens when you allow people to manage your money based on woke principles instead of on their actual skill and competence. I hope the depositors at this failed bank enjoy all of that diversity, because diversity is your strength, eh?” he wrote, adding, “Get woke, go broke.”
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said putting wokeness over sound businesses is a symptom of President Joe Biden’s America, according to Fox News.
“”I feel bad for all of these people that lost all their money in this woke bank. You know, it was more distressing to hear that the bank officials sold off their stock before this happened. It’s depressing to me. Who knows whether the Justice Department would go after them? They’re a woke company, so I guess not. And they’ll probably get away with it,”” Marcus said in an interview with Neil Cavuto.
He said the Biden administration bears some of the blame.
“I think that the system, that the administration has pushed many of these banks into [being] more concerned about global warming than they do about shareholder return. And these banks are badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on the one thing they should, which is, shareholder returns,” Marcus said.
“Instead of protecting the shareholders and their employees, they are more concerned about the social policies. And I think it’s probably a badly run bank. They’ve been there for a lot of years. It’s pathetic that so many people lost money that won’t get it back.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
