Signature Bank
Signature Bank was an American full-service commercial bank headquartered in New York City and with 40 private client offices in the states of New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada, and North Carolina.[2] In addition to banking products, specialty national businesses provided services specific to industries such as commercial real estate, private equity, mortgage servicing, and venture banking; subsidiaries of the bank provided equipment financing and investment services. At the end of 2022, the bank had total assets of $110.4 billion and deposits of $82.6 billion;[3] as of 2021, it had loans of $65.25 billion.[4]
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| Type | Public company |
|---|---|
| Nasdaq: SBNY | |
| Industry |
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| Founded | May 1, 2001 |
| Defunct | March 12, 2023 |
| Fate | Failed due to systemic risk and taken into receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, U.S. |
Key people |
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 US$1.337 billion (2022)[1] | |
| Total assets |  US$110 billion (2022)[1] |
| Total equity | US$8.01 billion (2022)[1] |
Number of employees | 2,243 (2022)[1] |
| Parent | Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation |
| Subsidiaries |
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| Website | signatureny |
| This article is part of a series about |
| March 2023 United States bank failures |
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Signature Bank was founded in 2001 by former executives and employees of Republic National Bank of New York after its purchase by HSBC. It focused on wealthy clients and built personal relationships with them. For most of its history, it had offices only in the New York City area. In the late 2010s, it began to expand geographically and in terms of services, though it was most noted for its 2018 decision to open itself to the cryptocurrency industry. By 2021, cryptocurrency businesses had represented 30 percent of its deposits.
Banking officials in the state of New York closed the bank on March 12, 2023, two days after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). After SVB failed and in light of the closure of the cryptocurrency-friendly Silvergate Bank earlier in the week, nervous customers withdrew more than $10 billion in deposits. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Two days after Signature was closed, it became known that the bank was being investigated by the United States Department of Justice concerning its failure to properly scrutinize clients' activities for signs of money laundering.
On March 19, a week after the bank closure, the FDIC sold the resulting bridge bank, most of its deposits, and its 40 branches to New York Community Bancorp to be absorbed by its Flagstar Bank subsidiary. Some $4 billion in digital asset banking deposits and $60 billion in loans were excluded from the transaction.