Finance · Profile from Finance Research Companion
Signature Bank
The New York commercial bank, founded in 2001 by a team of bankers who left Republic National Bank after its sale to HSBC, that grew without a consumer branch network (its ~40 offices, which the FDIC counted as branches, were mostly upstairs private-client suites) by hiring whole "private client groups" of relationship bankers, lent heavily on New York City multifamily and commercial property, and from 2018 became one of the two main US banks for the crypto industry through its real-time Signet payments network. Deposits jumped from ~$63bn at end-2020 to ~$106bn at end-2021, about 90% of them uninsured. After the FTX collapse it shrank its crypto deposits, and two days after Silicon Valley Bank failed it lost ~20% of its deposits in a single day. New York regulators closed it on Sunday, March 12, 2023, making it the third-largest bank failure in US history at the time (~$110bn of assets). Most of its deposits and ~$38.4bn of assets went to Flagstar Bank, a subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp, a week later; ~$60bn of loans stayed with the FDIC and were sold over the following year.
At a glance
- Founded
- Opened May 1, 2001, New York City
- Founders
- Joseph J. DePaolo (president and CEO), Scott A. Shay (chairman) and John Tamberlane (vice chairman), formerly of Republic National Bank of New York; initial backing from Israel's Bank Hapoalim, which sold its stake around the 2004 IPO (reported, verify)
- Headquarters
- 565 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York
- Ownership / structure
- Public company, Nasdaq: SBNY (listed 2004); unusually, the bank itself was the listed entity, with no holding company, so it reported to the FDIC rather than the SEC; New York state-chartered, FDIC-supervised non-member bank
- Leadership at failure
- Joseph DePaolo, president and CEO (2001–2023); Scott Shay, chairman; Eric Howell, president of the bank (named successor-in-waiting, reported); Barney Frank, former congressman and co-author of Dodd-Frank, director from 2015 (reported)
- Segment and clients
- Commercial bank for privately owned businesses and their owners: law firms, accountants, property managers and landlords, entertainment and media firms, private equity and venture funds (fund banking), and from 2018 crypto exchanges, stablecoin issuers and trading firms
- Scale at peak
- Total assets ~$118bn at end-2021 (reported, verify) and ~$110.4bn at end-2022; deposits ~$106.1bn (end-2021) and ~$88.6bn (end-2022); loans ~$74.3bn (end-2022); ~40 private client offices in New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada and North Carolina (reported, verify); ~2,200 employees (verify)
- Profit
- Net income $918.4m (2021) and a record $1.34bn (2022), $20.76 per diluted share (company results)
- Market value
- Peaked at ~$20bn+ in early 2022 (shares above ~$370, reported, verify); equity worthless after the failure
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding a branch-light private-client bank (2001); the New York multifamily and CRE lending push (2010s); digital asset banking and the Signet network (2018–19); the 2021 deposit boom past $100bn; the post-FTX crypto retreat (2022); the March 2023 run and closure; the sale to Flagstar and the FDIC loan sales (2023); reviews, litigation and aftermath (2023–26)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2001
Founding Private Client Banking Model
Founding
2010
New York Multifamily and CRE Lending
Lending strategy (portfolio concentration)
2018
Digital Asset Banking and Signet
Launch (new client vertical and payments product)
2021
Deposit Boom and 100bn Balance Sheet
Balance-sheet strategy (rapid growth)
2022
Crypto Retreat After FTX
Restructuring (planned reduction of a client vertical)
2023
Flagstar Sale and Loan Dispositions
Acquisition (failed-bank purchase and assumption) and asset sales by the receiver
2023
March Run and Closure
Failure
2025
Reviews Litigation and Aftermath
Regulatory review / litigation / rule changes