Good morning. President Biden called on Congress to toughen penalties on bank executives deemed responsible for the collapse of financial institutions, as the administration seeks to shore up confidence in the banking system following the failure of two midsize lenders and the bank-led rescue of a third.

• Not quite an overhaul, though: Mr. Biden stopped short of proposing an overhaul of federal rules for Wall Street. Administration officials said the president and his advisers are weighing additional regulatory and legislative recommendations in response to the crisis, but the officials didn’t offer a timeline for when they might be unveiled.
   
• Industry context: Officials are seeking to contain the fallout from the failure of two midsize lenders, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which regulators said posed a threat to the financial system. Separately, top U.S. banks said Thursday they would deposit $30 billion of their money into a third lender, First Republic Bank, after it faced a falling stock price and fleeing depositors.

Also see:

• Elizabeth Warren Calls for Investigation of SVB and Signature Bank Collapses

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Justice Department probes TikTok’s tracking of U.S. journalists.

The Justice Department is investigating the surveillance of American journalists by TikTok’s Chinese owners, a person familiar with the matter said, a revelation that comes as the Biden administration has shifted toward a tougher approach to address the perceived security threat from the video-sharing app.

Origins of investigation. The federal investigation began after the Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. in December acknowledged that its employees misused their authority to access the data of journalists in an effort to identify leaks of confidential company information.

• U.S. policy makers warily watched the rushed rescue of Credit Suisse Group AG over the weekend, hoping that its purchase by UBS Group AG would stem a slide in financial stocks triggered by the recent collapse of two regional banks.
   
• The Federal Reserve raised concerns about risk management at Silicon Valley Bank starting at least four years before its failure earlier this month, documents show.
   
• China’s Finance Ministry has suspended the operations of Deloitte’s Beijing office for three months, citing “serious audit deficiencies” in the firm’s work with a big state-owned asset manager. Deloitte is a sponsor of Risk & Compliance Journal.

UBS agrees to buy Credit Suisse for more than $3 billion.

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.

• Credit Suisse, the Risk-Taking Swiss Banking Giant, Succumbs to Crisis
• First Republic, SVB, Credit Suisse Show How Higher Interest Rates Caught Up With Banks
• Credit Suisse Bond-Wipeout Threatens $250 Billion Market
• Live Coverage: UBS, Global Bank Stocks Lower

• The parent company of Silicon Valley Bank filed for bankruptcy, easing a sale of its remaining assets after the technology-focused bank at the core of its business was seized by federal regulators.
   
• Many in the finance and technology worlds are asking how a banking franchise like Silicon Valley Bank that weeks ago was the envy of the financial world could fail in a matter of days, and how the management team could let it all happen.
   
• Main Street businesses and American families are likely to find it harder to get a loan because of turmoil in the banking industry, denting economic growth and raising the risk of a recession.
   
• China’s central bank moved to free up more liquidity to support business and household lending, a signal that Beijing remains wary about the strength of the recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

• Despite more than three-quarters of boards having at least one cyber expert among the directors, only three in 10 directors rate their board’s ability to oversee a cyber crisis highly, according to a survey by WSJ Pro and The National Association of Corporate Directors.
   
• Survey Results Part Two: Directors Must Drive Cybersecurity Improvements

• In his first trip to territory seized in the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the occupied Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
   
• The meeting in Moscow this week between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to showcase what they have declared a partnership with “no limits” between their countries. Beneath the surface are economic, political, cultural and historical divisions that undercut the relationship.
   
• North Korea says it was simulating a nuclear attack on U.S. and South Korean forces with the launch of a short-range ballistic missile with a mock warhead Sunday.
   
• Beijing’s detention of tech rainmaker Fan Bao rattles an industry that thought the crackdown was over.
   
• The Biden administration is accelerating its efforts to pursue trade agreements that bypass Congress as it seeks to counter China, but the moves have sparked a fight with lawmakers that threatens to upend the president’s trade strategy.
   
• Signature Banks’s strategy delivered steady profits and rapid growth, making it among the highest-valued banks in America. Yet it ultimately hastened its own undoing: The bank failed after its tightknit clientele drained their accounts in a panic.
   
• Car makers trying to catch up to Tesla Inc.’s electric vehicles were thrown a curveball recently with Elon Musk’s latest goal: slashing the cost of building next-generation cars by 50% in coming years.