Third Time Unlucky? This SVB Employee Was Also Part Of Lehman Brothers & Arthur Andersen Collapse The US has witnessed two back-to-back bank collapses in the last few days. First Silicon Valley Bank and then Signature Bank. And the mammoth collapse Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has drawn comparisons with 2008's Lehman Brothers collapse, and tensions have been rising over whether a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis is on the cards. But amidst all this, an employee of the collapsed SVB has come to light. Joseph Gentile, SVB's Chief Administrative Officer, was a former Chief Financial Officer at Lehman Brothers' Global Investment Bank prior to the bank's public collapse in 2008. Gentile had left Lehman in 2007, just one year before it went bankrupt in 2008. And that's not all. Gentile had also worked at Arthur Andersen, an American accounting firm that went bankrupt in 2002. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), SVB was among the top 20 American commercial banks, with $209 billion in total assets at the end of 2022. This is the second-largest bank to fail in the US since 2008. Lehman Brothers' Global Investment Bank was also impacted by the 2008 financial meltdown. At the time of its collapse in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, with 25,000 employees worldwide. It had $639 billion in assets and $613 billion in liabilities, as per the IANS report. Prior to joining the SVB in 2007, Joseph Gentile served as the CFO for Lehman Brothers’ Global Investment Bank, where he directed the accounting and financial needs within the Fixed Income division. Prior to that, he served as CFO of the Global Corporate and Investment Bank at Bank of America, where he led the Capital Markets Division. Previously, Gentile had reportedly spent more than 10 years with US banking giant J.P. Morgan in various financial management positions, including global head of financial risk management. Joseph Gentile had started his career at Arthur Andersen, which went on to become bankrupt in 2002. Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advice, consulting, and other professional services to large corporations. Gentile had earned his B.S. in accounting and his M.B.A. in finance from St. John’s University.
