Top executives of First Republic Bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the two months before the bank’s shares plummeted during the panic over the health of regional lenders. The bank’s chief risk officer sold on March 6, according to government documents. Two days later, Silicon Valley Bank shocked the market and sent other banks into freefall. First Republic was among the worst hit.

Executives had been selling for months, the documents show. Executive Chairman James Herbert II has sold $4.5 million worth of shares since the start of the year. In all, insiders have sold $11.8 million worth of stock so far this year at prices averaging just below $130 a share. The bank’s chief credit officer, its president of private wealth management and chief executive together sold $7 million worth of stock. First Republic’s stock has tumbled further this week, falling 21% on Wednesday and an additional 22% as of midday Thursday, to $24.13. Credit-rating firm S&P Global Ratings downgraded the bank’s credit by four notches to a speculative or “junk” rating.

…As of Wednesday, First Republic is the only company listed on the S&P 500 index that doesn’t file its insider trades with the SEC, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. Signature Bank was similarly exempted, but its shares were replaced in the index Wednesday after its closure on Sunday. The quirk in the reporting rules goes back to the Securities Act of 1933, which exempted banks from registering their securities with the SEC.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-republic-bank-executives-sold-12-million-in-stock-in-months-before-crash-ca6ce79e?mod=e2tw

Attorney General Merrick Garland came into the job determined, above all else, to restore the integrity of the Justice Department. In trying to convince everyone that the department is above reproach, however, he has made a series of unwise, showy moves that leave it looking more, not less, political.…

One wonders whether Garland and his aides did any significant research to determine how widespread the problem of retained-and-voluntarily-returned documents actually is.


What if former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who is clearly considering a presidential run, finds and returns classified materials? Or former national security adviser John Bolton? It’s likely that lawyers for any number of ambitious former public servants are combing files.


We might soon realize that Biden’s sloppiness is neither “criminal” nor “extraordinary,” and therefore the special counsel statute does not apply.

https://wapo.st/3kO5yAV