Reported by Roland Li

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating trading activity by First Republic Bank executives before the San Francisco institution’s sale to JPMorgan Chase, Bloomberg reported.

The agency is reportedly looking for evidence of improper insider trading. It isn’t clear which executives are the focus of the inquiry, and no one has been charged, Bloomberg reported.

From January to early March, top First Republic executives sold $11.8 million in stock, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Founder and then-executive chairman James Herbert II sold $4.5 million in stock in two sales in January and February. A Herbert spokesperson said the timing was consistent with his “annual estate planning and philanthropy, with more than a fifth of the proceeds donated to charity,” according to the Journal.

In January, Robert Thornton, then-president of private wealth management, sold $3.5 million in stock, and then-CEO Michael Roffler sold nearly $1 million in shares, the Journal said.

Billionaire Warren Buffett criticized First Republic on Saturday, highlighting its practice of offering jumbo, fixed-rate mortgages not backed by the government that in some cases required only interest payments, which Buffett called “a crazy proposition.”

“It was doing it in plain sight and the world ignored it till it blew up,” Buffett said at his company Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting.

Read full report: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/first-republic-bank-18083519.php