Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Gruenberg is retiring in January after a tumultuous few years that capped a two-decade-long career at the agency. He served through the global financial crisis of 2008 as well as during 2023’s banking crisis, which saw the FDIC play a role in resolving several bank failures, including voting to consider
lawsuits against former Silicon Valley Bank executives. This year, he’s weathered the agency’s 2023 bad-behavior scandal, in which he was accused of not tamping down a culture of harassment, and of having his own anger-management issues at the office.
The FDIC has also drawn fire for
its non-response to the Synapse bankruptcy, which in May left thousands of customers unable to access their money when the fintech-middleware vendor went under. Although much of the money was held (and, in some cases, remains) in FDIC-insured bank accounts, the recordkeeping between Synapse and its partner banks failed to show which customers held which funds in which accounts, and the banks have declined to return the money without these records. Gruenberg declined to step in: the FDIC’s position has been that deposit insurance only covers the failure of an accountholder’s bank, which has not happened in this case.
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