• During Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) 2023 collapse, then-FDIC chair Martin Gruenberg rejected multiple credible offers to buy the bank and its deposits, according to people with firsthand knowledge

• Sources say top VCs lobbied D.C. to bail SVB out for the sake of startups — to no avail, until Nancy Pelosi called the White House and asked that the bank's uninsured depositors be made whole

• The FDIC seized Signature bank to invoke the Systemic Risk Exception, which would allow uninsured depositors at SVB and other banks to be made whole, even though Signature was solvent and had the liquidity to handle the crisis, sources allege

• The FDIC is currently trying to cover its tracks by investigating Signature as a possible precursor to legal action against the bank’s former executives

The following piece of reporting proposes an alternative history of the events that led to the closure of Signature Bank in March 2023, based on conversations with sources and information in the public record. As with my reporting on Silvergate and the Operation Choke Point 2.0 scandal (which has since been validated by subsequent reporting and Congressional investigations), my sources include eight individuals with direct first-hand knowledge of the events reported herein. However, due to the highly sensitive nature of the information being shared, I am constrained in what I can share about their identities, and I can’t speak to their connection to the parties discussed here. Thus, readers would do well to approach my account with skepticism.