Travis Hill

Stories

The FDIC just cut the SVB/Signature “bailout bill” — and added a refund clause

Overseeing the special-assessment recalibration and future offsets framework

The FDIC spent 2024–2025 billing big banks for the emergency decision to make SVB and Signature depositors whole. Now, with one quarter left in the planned eight-quarter collection, the agency is lowering that final rate and trying to prevent an awkward ending: collecting more than the losses it's legally required to recover.

Updated May 15

U.S. regulators dismantle post-crisis limits on leveraged lending

Rule Changes

FDIC leader endorsing rollback and promising principles-based supervision

In March 2013, U.S. bank regulators issued joint supervisory guidance on leveraged lending to prevent a return of pre-2008-style underwriting excesses, with examiners informally anchoring scrutiny around a roughly six-times-EBITDA leverage benchmark. Over the next decade, banks' pullback shifted riskier deal finance toward private-credit funds, CLOs, and other nonbanks—expanding an opaque "shadow banking" ecosystem even as regulators maintained the guidance was supervisory, not a binding rule.

Updated May 9

Notable Quotes

“The SVB litigation is by far the largest existing known variable.” — Travis Hill, FDIC board statement (Dec. 16, 2025)

from The FDIC just cut the SVB/Signature “bailout bill” — and added a refund clause · Updated May 15

In the joint OCC–FDIC statement, the agencies argued that the 2013 guidance had been ‘overly restrictive’ and caused a ‘significant drop in leveraged lending market share by regulated banks and significant growth in leveraged lending market share by nonbanks.’

from U.S. regulators dismantle post-crisis limits on leveraged lending · Updated May 9

In an FSOC statement, Hill said the FDIC had withdrawn from the 2013 interagency leveraged lending guidance and replaced it with general principles for safe and sound lending to promote more bank lending.

from U.S. regulators dismantle post-crisis limits on leveraged lending · Updated May 9