Watch: Senate questions Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank executives over failings

Watch as executives from Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank testify before the US Senate on Tuesday, 16 May.

The committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs is meeting to conduct a hearing on "Examining the Failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.”

Witnesses are Gregory Becker, the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Scott Shay, former chairman and co-founder of Signature Bank, and Eric Howell, former president of Signature Bank.

A bank run - where large numbers of customers withdraw their money over fears about a bank's solvency - forced US regulators to take over SVB.

This came just before the collapse of Signature Bank.

In written testimony released on Monday, Mr Becker said he "never envisioned" SVB collapsing.

"I never imagined that these unprecedented events could happen to SVB and strongly believe that the leadership team and I made the best decisions we could with the facts, forecasts, and outside expert advice available to us at the time," he concluded.

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