The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation denied that it would require any Signature Bank buyer to divest its crypto operations.
The FDIC responded to a Portal report Wednesday that said, “Any Signature buyer must agree to divest all crypto business with the bank,” citing two unnamed sources. An FDIC spokesman denied this to Portal.
An FDIC spokesman said in an email that “the receivership will not end until all of the bank’s assets are sold and all claims against the bank are settled and the acquirer decides the terms of its offer.”
The acquirer will notify the FDIC “what assets and liabilities it is willing to assume from the failed bank,” the spokesman said, citing the agency’s resolution manual. The spokesman also referred CoinDesk to two joint statements released by the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, one of which says banks are “neither prohibited nor discouraged” from providing services to any sector to provide.
Portal reported that an FDIC spokesman told the news service that “the agency would not require a divestment of crypto activities as part of a sale.”
The signature was confiscated by the New York Treasury Department over the weekend and handed over to the FDIC. While Signature board member Barney Frank (of the Dodd-Frank Act) claimed it was a political move possibly caused by anti-crypto sentiment, a NYDFS spokesman said in a statement that the regulator was after a bank lost confidence in the bank’s leadership last Friday and a lack of “reliable” information over the weekend.
The FDIC now intends to auction Signature and Silicon Valley Bank — another bank seized by a state regulator last week — possibly by the end of this week, Portal reported.
UPDATE (17 Mar 2023 01:35 UTC): Clarifies the timeline, adds links.