Despite SVB, former UO Board Chair Chuck Lillis still holds record for largest US bank failure

I’m no macroeconomist, but all signs are that the FDIC will quickly arrange a sale of Silicon Valley Bank and contain the contagion, in no small part due to the lessons learned from the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual, which was one of the precursors to the Great Recession.

UO donor and former Board of Trustees Chair Chuck Lillis was a WaMu board member and was sued for trying to move money beyond the reach of creditors before the bankruptcy, among other things. (His official UO bio doesn’t mention WaMu. Odd.)

WaMu’s D&O insurance company paid out, and then sued the WaMu directors, including Lillis, arguing that they’d failed to exercise their due diligence and that they should be personally liable. The lawsuits finally ended with a $37M payout. There was another $49M for ERISA violations – meaning raiding employee retirement accounts, which Lillis had been accused of at two other former companies.

But given that his checks to UO haven’t bounced, there seems little chance we’ll need to dename the LCB’s Lillis Hall, as President Frohnmayer had to do with Grayson Hall. [Full disclosure: While I have the fake brass “A” that the guys from facilities maintenance hacksawed off what is now McKenzie, I do *not* know who has the Pioneer Father’s nose.]

Don’t cry for Lillis, he came out of this just fine, as those of his ilk generally do. He’s now Chairman of the Board of Somalogic, whose shares have fallen 83% in the past two years, and where his bio also doesn’t mention WaMu.