Banking Crisis 2023

Ken Vecchione, leader of Western Alliance since 2018, grew up listening to his parents talk business strategy around the dinner table. He called on those lessons and his more than 30 years of experience to steer the regional bank through last year's turmoil.

Ten months after the Raleigh, North Carolina, company acquired a large chunk of Silicon Valley Bank, it says it is seeing good progress in keeping and winning back the latter's former customers. But the ongoing slowdown in private equity and venture capital activity will challenge the unit's growth.

The Bank Term Funding Program, established during last year's liquidity crunch, will stop issuing new loans on March 11. Until then, banks can still borrow from the facility, though at less favorable terms.

After California was hit hard by the banking crisis of 2023, tens of thousands of commercial and consumer customers turned to East West, helping the company achieve record full-year revenue, its CEO says.

The Seattle bank's stock price fell in 2023 amid concerns over rising interest rates and its concentration of multifamily loans. The buyer is FirstSun Capital Bancorp, which raised $175 million as part of the deal.

The Federal Reserve's inexplicable failure to enforce rules requiring Silicon Valley Bank Financial Group to serve as a "source of strength" for its subsidiary saddled the FDIC with billions in extra losses.

Surging interest rates, recession threats and weaker stock valuations bogged down merger-and-acquisition activity last year. The 98 announced deals fell short of even 2020, when the pandemic briefly brought the economy to a standstill.

Heading into the year, U.S. banks were facing pressure to pay higher rates to their depositors. But they could not have anticipated just how important deposits would soon become.

Overall merger-and-acquisition activity proved modest across the banking sector, but several prominent deals were reached. Read on for details of the year's biggest transactions.