Executives at the doomed Signature Bank produced a Broadway-style musical video to launch the firm in the early 2000s — and its song branded the bank “the stupidest idea I ever heard” and even quipped that it could “diminish and fail.”
Clips of the musical number — now dripping with irony after regulators stepped in over the weekend and took control of the New York-based firm in a bid to stave off a US banking crisis — resurfaced online and went viral this week.
“Look, the only way we are going to do this thing is if we start a bank from scratch,” the bank’s co-founder and chairman, Scott Shay, declares at the start as he fidgets in front of a dressing-room mirror with fellow executives.
“From scratch?” replies John Tamberlane, the bank’s vice chairman. “You gotta be kidding.”
“How in the world do you do that?” asks Joseph DePaolo, Signature’s CEO. “Is there a book ‘How to Build a Bank for Dummies?’”
