Silicon Valley Bank’s failed CEO Gregory Becker escapes to his $3.1 million Hawaiian hideaway

• Gregory Becker and his wife Marilyn Bautista flew first class to Maui on Monday and are now holed up in their luxurious three-bed, three-bath townhouse, DailyMail.com can reveal
• Ousted Becker, 55, put the Silicon Valley Bank collapse behind him and was seen walking the streets of Lahaina in shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops
• The Justice Department has launched a probe into his decision to cash out $3.57million of stock just weeks before the bank folded

The ousted head of Silicon Valley Bank has fled to his luxurious $3.1million Maui bolthole – leaving the chaos caused by the bank’s collapse 3,000 miles behind him.

While his customers worry about when – or even if – they will be able to access their funds, Silicon Valley Bank’s disgraced former boss is soaking up the sun at his oceanfront Hawaiian hideaway.

Gregory Becker and his wife Marilyn Bautista took a chauffeur-driven black limo to San Francisco Airport on Monday afternoon and after sprinting through the United Airlines terminal, then flew first-class to Maui, where they were seen Wednesday walking through the streets of Lahaina in shorts and flip flops.

Now the couple are holed up in the two-story townhouse that they rebuilt after tearing the much smaller original down.

Becker, 55, has been widely criticized for the way he handled the bank’s collapse and now the Justice Department has launched a probe into his decision to cash out $3.57 million of stock just weeks before it folded. CNBC reported that he sold nearly $30 million of stock over the past two years.

DailyMail.com was there when Becker and Bautista, 54, left their home in Menlo Park, California, casually dressed and hauling matching OGIO suitcases. He wore a neat gray sweater, faded jeans and a black baseball cap covering his distinctive bald head.

His Stanford Law lecturer wife wore a navy blue padded vest over a blue sweater which she wore with jeans and New Balance sneakers while carrying a yellow quilted tote bag.

They caught United Flight 1749 landing at Kahului Airport on Maui at 7:38 pm local time.  

Becker had spent the weekend in negotiations over the sale of the collapsed bank before returning to their $2.8million home late Sunday night. He sent a video message to bank staff, urging them to ‘stick together’ and ‘support each other’ through the crisis.

But by Monday he was out at the bank – so where better to go to avoid the mayhem he had left behind than his home in a gated community in Lahaina?

Becker had worked for SVB for 30 years but was fired by President Joe Biden over the weekend following a run on the bank that led to it being shut down and auctioned off by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

It is still not clear whether any of the bank’s 8,553 staff members will keep their jobs – although Becker and other senior leaders including Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck, who sold off shares worth $500,000 prior to the collapse, have been canned.

Mom-of-three Bautista, a specialist in bankruptcy law, had spent most of the weekend alone but went jogging on a trail close to the couple’s luxury Menlo Park home on Sunday where she was seen smiling while chatting on the phone.

The couple married on Maui in 2015, after both got divorces from their first spouses.

Becker has a son Nick and a daughter Lauren from his first marriage. Bautista has a girl Willa and two boys Boston and John Marc. 

They had worked together previously and reconnected after their children were enrolled in the same private school in California.

They bought their three-bed, three-bath Hawaiian townhouse in May 2018, then immediately decided to raze it to the ground and build something better on the lot which overlooks a small stretch of golden sand running behind the property.

The two-story home sits within a posh gated community at one end of Lahaina – a town of 13,000 people on Maui’s northwestern coast famous for being the one-time capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii and for its quaint Front Street shopping area.

Amenities within the community include a tennis court, three surfbreaks and clubhouse while residents also have access to three swimming pools.

And while California is suffering from a series of storms that saw the Menlo Park area battered with rain on Sunday and Monday, Becker is now enjoying balmy 80-degree temperatures and blue skies in his Maui idyll.

Upon landing in Maui, Becker and his wife spent time with Bautista’s brother Mark Marchello, who is a real estate agent on the island and lives just a stone’s throw from their condo.

They were tooling around town in a silver Mini Cooper convertible with personalized Hawaii license plates. They picked up lunch Wednesday from Cheeseburger in Paradise.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday caused turmoil in the financial markets – compounded by the closure of a second bank, Signature, that was also heavily exposed to the tech industry over the weekend.

Last Friday, there were scenes of panic outside branches of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature on as desperate customers attempted to withdraw their funds.

Along with tech businesses, the bank’s clients included a number of Napa Valley wineries which caused chaos in an industry still recovering from the effects of the devastating Tubbs Fire in 2017.

Banking shares plummeted when the stock market opened Monday morning – with Western Alliance Bancorp, Metropolitan Bank and PacWest Bancorp among the worst hit.

In an address made shortly before leaving for San Diego, California, President Joe Biden attempted to calm the chaos, telling Americans: ‘Our banking system is safe’.

He added: ‘Your deposits are safe. Let me also assure you: we will not stop at this. We’ll do whatever is needed on top of this.’

But while those with deposits held in Silicon Valley Bank are being taken care of, the President warned that shareholders and executives would not be compensated.

He said: ‘The management of these banks will be fired. Investors will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk and when the risk didn’t pay off, investors lose their money.

‘That’s how capitalism works.’

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced that it had agreed to guarantee all the deposits held by Silicon Valley Bank and restarted banking under the guise of Santa Clara Bank on Monday.

But despite Biden’s bid to reassure business and the markets, analysts remain fearful of the episode causing another financial crisis and even a recession.

Speaking on Monday, Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos said: ‘Competition for deposits is likely to become more intense in the US Banking System, leading to an upward drift in the cost of bank-based financing and an extra layer of tightening hitting the real economy.’

Biden also faced criticism for rescuing the tech firms caught up in Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, with former Vice President Mike Pence writing that he had performed a bailout in all but name.

Writing for DailyMail.com, Pence said: ‘Banks make foolish decisions enabled by imprudent government policies and the American people pay the price.

‘Of course, President Biden says taxpayers won’t pay for the bailout, but that is disingenuous – every American with a bank account will pay higher fees to replenish the billions spent by the FDIC to backstop failing banks.’

And on Thursday at a meeting of the Senate Finance CommitteeTreasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted the banking system is sound and pointed out that as early as Monday SVB customers could access their money.