The conversations come as Buffett has been a savior to the banking sector in the past. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) invested $5 billion in Bank of America (BAC) in 2011 as he tried to bolster the bank due to its losses tied to subprime mortgages. In 2008, Buffett came to the aid of Goldman Sachs (GS), investing $5 billion in the bank in the depths of the financial crisis.
Regional banks may need the help of Buffett after several of the banks' stocks cratered this week, such as Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL), KeyCorp (KEY) Comerica (CMA) and Zions Bancorp (ZION), after the twin failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Credit Suisse, the battered Swiss banking giant, has agreed to a takeover by Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS — a move aimed at staving off immediate concerns of a disorderly bankruptcy and stemming panic about global financial turmoil.
UBS has agreed to buy Credit Suisse in an emergency deal that ties up two of Europe’s largest banks, Swiss authorities announced Sunday.
Swiss authorities are planning to speed up the process by circumventing laws that would require a shareholder vote, the Financial Times reported earlier Sunday. The Financial Times also reported that the value of the all-share deal was more than $2 billion, but that figure was not officially confirmed by the Swiss authorities.
A “swift and stabilizing solution was absolutely necessary,” Alain Berset, president of the Swiss Confederation, said in a Sunday afternoon news conference. The UBS deal, he said, was “the best solution for restoring the confidence that has been lacking in financial markets recently.”
In a joint statement Sunday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said that they “welcome” the announcement.
“The capital and liquidity positions of the U.S. banking system are strong, and the U.S. financial system is resilient,” Yellen and Powell wrote. “We have been in close contact with our international counterparts to support their implementation.”
Credit Suisse and UBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The takeover caps more than a week of speculation over the Swiss giant’s fate amid growing fears of a global financial crisis, after two U.S. regional banks suddenly failed earlier this month. Although U.S. regulators have taken sweeping steps, including backstopping deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York, those measures have done little to assuage fears of a cascading banking crisis.
Those concerns went global this week, after Credit Suisse warned of “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting. On Thursday, the bank received $53.7 billion in emergency funds from Switzerland’s central bank, but it wasn’t enough to restore confidence in the bank’s viability. Shares of Credit Suisse have tumbled more than 20 percent in the past week, and more than 35 percent this year.
The past week has raised new questions on what it will take to avert another crisis. On Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on Congress to lift the federal insurance cap for bank deposits above $250,000. She also urged lawmakers to repeal a provision of the 2018 law that had loosened restrictions on banks with $50 billion or more in assets, saying the latest tumult in the financial system underscored her belief that the Fed has fallen short on its core duties.

Hey!!!! Recessions are a part of life in our system. They come and they go. For whatever the reason the next recession is always somewhere in the future. But they are inevitable.

UBS Group AG agreed to take over its longtime rival Credit Suisse Group AG for more than $3 billion, pushed into the biggest banking deal in years by regulators eager to halt a dangerous decline in confidence in the global banking system. The deal between the twin pillars of Swiss finance is the first megamerger of systemically important global banks since the 2008 financial crisis when institutions across the banking landscape were carved up and matched with rivals, often at the behest of regulators.
The Swiss government said it would provide more than $9 billion to backstop some losses that UBS may incur by taking over Credit Suisse. The Swiss National Bank also provided more than $100 billion of liquidity to UBS to help facilitate the deal.
Swiss authorities were under pressure to make the deal happen before Asian markets opened for the week. The urgency on the part of regulators was prompted by an increasingly dire outlook at Credit Suisse, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. The bank faced as much as $10 billion in customer outflows a day last week, this person said.
The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month prompted investors globally to scour for weak spots in the financial system. Credit Suisse was already first on many lists of troubled institutions, weakened by years of self-inflicted scandals and trading losses. Swiss officials, along with regulators in the U.S., U.K. and European Union, who all oversee parts of the bank, feared it would become insolvent this week if not dealt with, and they were concerned crumbling confidence could spread to other banks.
An end to Credit Suisse’s nearly 167-year run marks one of the most significant moments in the banking world since the last financial crisis. It also represents a new global dimension of damage from a banking storm started with the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month.
Unlike Silicon Valley Bank, whose business was concentrated in a single geographic area and industry, Credit Suisse is a global player despite recent efforts to reduce its sprawl and curb riskier activities such as lending to hedge funds.
Credit Suisse had a half-trillion-dollar balance sheet and around 50,000 employees at the end of 2022, including more than 16,000 in Switzerland.
UBS has around 74,000 employees globally. It has a balance sheet roughly twice as large, at $1.1 trillion in total assets. After swallowing Credit Suisse, UBS’s balance sheet will rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG in asset size.

Before Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the Fed Spotted Big Problems
The bank was using an incorrect model as it assessed its own risks amid rising interest rates, and spent much of 2022 under a supervisory review.

Yes just saw this! Is anyone considering nibbling on any of the banks? If so how are you doing so? Andrew Bary had a nice piece in Barron’s where he favored JPM, MS and GS… it’s a good read.