Tim Mayopoulos was squashed into a middle seat in coach on his flight to San Francisco, the only one available when he booked that afternoon. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working, so he pulled out a notepad to jot down what he would say to employees when he started his new job as chief executive of the failed Silicon Valley Bank the next morning. Around the same time that Sunday evening, Greg Carmichael walked into Signature Bank’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters. The employees on site had just learned the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seizing the bank and booting its chief executive. Carmichael was in charge now. “I walked in, put my briefcase down, and the FDIC asked me if I would address the group,” Carmichael said. Both Mayopoulos and Carmichael were called up from an FDIC reserve corps of industry veterans who could parachute in when a bank went down, the Wall Street Journal reported. The group, formed in 2017, came about after the 2008 financial crisis, when the agency had to install one of its own top officials to lead failed IndyMac. For years, no one needed them. That changed the weekend of March 12. To prepare for the moment, the FDIC had screened more than 100 candidates with varied backgrounds — including as CEOs, chief financial officers and chief operating officers — to reflect the roles that might be needed. David Kiddney, who oversees the program, said many of the candidates took part in small group sessions to review the protocols for running bridge banks.