Marshall irritated by regulators’ action in bank failure; Intrust, UMB facing downgrade

TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall expressed frustration with actions of federal regulators amid collapse of Silicon Valley Bank that he equated to a bailout.

“We don’t think it’s fair that community banks in Kansas or across America are bailing out billionaires from California, from Wall Street, and certainly not bailing out Chinese depositors in California,” Marshall said during a television appearance on Fox Business.

Meanwhile, Intrust Financial Corp. of Wichita and UMB Financial Corp. of Kansas City, Missouri, were two of six banks placed under review for a debt-rating downgrade by Moody’s in wake of collapse by New York-based Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank in California.

State regulators closed Signature Bank over the weekend in what was the third-largest failure in U.S. banking history. That transpired two days after Silicon Valley Bank was closed.

Marshall said he believed Silicon Valley Bank engaged in “gross mismanagement” and the situation didn’t warrant expansion of federal regulation of the industry.

“We don’t need more regulations. You can’t fix stupid and an aggressive out of control board, and that’s exactly what they had there. They did not manage the risk properly,” the Kansas Republican said.

On Monday, President Joe Biden said his administration acted promptly to ease uncertainty about the U.S. banking system following collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which was reported to be the second-largest bank failure in the nation’s history.

The president said executives of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank should be fired and that depositors of the banks would have full access to their money.