Silicon Valley Bank collapses after failing to raise capital

[Scott]

 

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed Friday morning after a stunning 48 hours in which its capital crisis set off fears of a meltdown across the banking industry.

Its failure marks the largest shutdown of a US bank since 2008, when Washington Mutual fell during the financial crisis.

California regulators closed down the tech lender and put SVB in control of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/10/investing/svb-bank/index.html

[Credo]

This does not bode well.  I hope the Feds are keeping a close eye on all the banks.  

[eisfeld]

3 hours ago, Scott said:

California regulators ... put SVB in control of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

I'd hope it's the other way round ????

 

A bit of context: SVB got triple digit billion dollar deposits in the past years during which there were near zero interest rates. That's not small money. They then bought 10 year treasury bills and similar termed mortgage backed securities with that money. Now, the money is not gone. It's just that it's locked for many years and if too many people start to withdraw money... boom. SVB could sell those assets but they'd have to incur a loss since interest rates are up and no-one will buy these low interest assets when they can get much higher interest ones unless they get a good discount.

 

What is intersting is that the FDIC took over SVB in the middle of a business day. They usually don't do that and wait until Friday after hours. They also usually try to broker a deal with a bigger bank to swallow the troubled one while the FDIC will take over some of the losses.

 

This is a really messy situation. Thousands of small and medium sized businesses had their money in SVB. This alone is a big issue but it raises fear that other, potentially bigger, banks face similar issues.

[sscc]

AS expected 

[nigelforbes]

This seems to be a rising interest rates  story at a relatively young bank that served startups in Silicon Valley.

The bank that failed, Silvergate, saw a funds outflow because the Fed was raising interest rates, which it is forecasted to continue doing, potentially even more aggressively. Depositors at the bank, many of whom were new or up and coming tech. startups, withdrew funds to invest elsewhere at higher rates of return. This happens all the time everywhere as interest rates rise. The problem at SVB was the large number of higher value accounts from the tech start-ups, the bank appears not to have had the traditional consumer base of large numbers of stable smaller account holders that act as a cushion.

This forced SVB to raise capital because lending rules demand a certain level of liquidity that is covered by deposits and this was being threatened. The bank was holding Treasury Bonds which are about as stable an investment as you can get. If you hold the bonds until maturity, you get all your money back and in the meantime you've received coupon/interest payments. BUT, if you have to sell early (and SVB did), AND, if in the meantime the Fed has issued new bonds because they were raising interest rates (which they were), the redemption value of the bond is discounted because they were sold prior to maturity. This means the bonds were sold at a loss and this showed up in the share price of the bank which was quickly spotted by short sellers who bet against the shares, big time, and the ball started to roll downhill. A hedge fund publicly told depositors to withdraw their funds which of course didn't help matters. The FDIC took control of the bank Friday.

A second bank is in a similar position, SVB Financial. SVB is in a mess because of customers who invested in crypto and withdrew funds after the crash of FTX. But it's the same story, enforced sales, enforced losses, SVB is currently trying to raise capital.

So then contagion comes into play and the herd starts to panic and suddenly every bank in the world is going to fail, according to social media pundits. The threat of enforced sales and enforced losses of Treasury Bonds at banks, in a rising interest rate environment is a real risk and doubtless there will be other banks out there that aren't well capitalized and some may fail. But bank liquidity rules are rigidly enforced and most banks will have a stable base of customer deposits which tend to act as a cushion or stable base because they tend not to be volatile.

What is interesting in this example is that the bank failed on the day that the US Jobs Report showed that new jobs were down, which pointed to a reduced need to increase rates further and faster. You may have seen that Jerome was in Congress this week and said during his highly televised address that, (paraphrased) "rates may need to stay higher, for longer and get there more rapidly", a statement that no doubt was a catalyst for bank withdrawals and prompted bank runs. The head of one the largest hedge funds heard what Jerome said and promptly told him, publicly, to shut the pherk up because he was confusing markets. Hear hear I say. 

 

EDIT, after all that I just realized that poster @eisfeld above explained already explained this quite adequately, that'll teach me to read the whole thread before responding!

Edited March 10, 2023 by nigelforbes

[placeholder]

3 hours ago, Credo said:

This does not bode well.  I hope the Feds are keeping a close eye on all the banks.  

Well, it's a lot harder for them now. A bank like Silicon Valley Bank is no longer subject to the same stress test rules as are the bigger banks. The Trump administration revoked regulations that authorized the FDC to perform those tests on banks the size of SVB.

 

":Some banking experts on Friday pointed out that a bank as large as Silicon Valley Bank might have managed its interest rate risks better had parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory package, put in place after the 2008 crisis, not been rolled back under President Trump.

In 2018, Mr. Trump signed a bill that lessened regulatory scrutiny for many regional banks. Silicon Valley Bank’s chief executive, Greg Becker, was a strong supporter of the change, which removed the requirement that banks with assets under $250 billion submit to stress testing by the Fed, and changed requirements for the amount of cash they had to keep on their balance sheets to protect against shocks."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/business/silicon-valley-bank-stock.html

 

Edit: Correction. Actually, it wasn't a regulatory action. It was done under a bill voted on by Congress with virtually unanimous Republican support and signed into law by Trump. And get this. Here's its name:

"Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act"

Edited March 11, 2023 by placeholder

[nigelforbes]

5 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Well, it's a lot harder for them now. A bank like Silicon Valley Bank is no longer subject to the same stress test rules as are the bigger banks. The Trump administration revoked regulations that authorized the FDC to perform those tests on banks the size of SVB.

 

":Some banking experts on Friday pointed out that a bank as large as Silicon Valley Bank might have managed its interest rate risks better had parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory package, put in place after the 2008 crisis, not been rolled back under President Trump.

In 2018, Mr. Trump signed a bill that lessened regulatory scrutiny for many regional banks. Silicon Valley Bank’s chief executive, Greg Becker, was a strong supporter of the change, which removed the requirement that banks with assets under $250 billion submit to stress testing by the Fed, and changed requirements for the amount of cash they had to keep on their balance sheets to protect against shocks."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/business/silicon-valley-bank-stock.html

 

What was the rationale for Trump doing that? Your link is behind a paywall so I can't tell, if indeed it is explained why.

[placeholder]

4 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

What was the rationale for Trump doing that? Your link is behind a paywall so I can't tell, if indeed it is explained why.

No explanation but see me emandation of my post on the matter. The Republican name for the bill says enough, I think.

[nigelforbes]

2 minutes ago, placeholder said:

No explanation but see me emandation of my post on the matter. The Republican name for the bill says enough, I think.

Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. Well that worked out well!

 

I find it hard to understand the logic that consumers are better protected when smaller banks should be subject to less stressful rules than big banks.

 

 

 

[placeholder]

2 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. Well that worked out well!

 

I find it hard to understand the logic that consumers are better protected when smaller banks should be subject to less stressful rules than big banks.

Me too. But then we aren't residents of Opposite World.

[Misty]

3 hours ago, eisfeld said:

I'd hope it's the other way round ????

 

A bit of context: SVB got triple digit billion dollar deposits in the past years during which there were near zero interest rates. That's not small money. They then bought 10 year treasury bills and similar termed mortgage backed securities with that money. Now, the money is not gone. It's just that it's locked for many years and if too many people start to withdraw money... boom. SVB could sell those assets but they'd have to incur a loss since interest rates are up and no-one will buy these low interest assets when they can get much higher interest ones unless they get a good discount.

 

What is intersting is that the FDIC took over SVB in the middle of a business day. They usually don't do that and wait until Friday after hours. They also usually try to broker a deal with a bigger bank to swallow the troubled one while the FDIC will take over some of the losses.

 

This is a really messy situation. Thousands of small and medium sized businesses had their money in SVB. This alone is a big issue but it raises fear that other, potentially bigger, banks face similar issues.

Thanks for laying things out clearly.  I've seen speculation on why the middle of the business day failure, rather than waiting until Friday after hours.  Will be interesting to see how this is explained. The situation seemed to be moving rapidly, but that wouldn't be unusual in this type of situation. SVB apparently did a lot of business in China, so some speculate there are bigger issues at play.

 

Interesting too that banks 1) do not have to mark-to-market their bond holdings and 2) aren't required to maintain a better balance between the duration of their assets and their liabilities.  Investors in funds that invest in the same bonds would have already recognized the change in bond prices caused by rising interest rates.  Any equity analyst following this bank should have been well aware of the pending issues.

 

[nigelforbes]

It seems the CEO, one Greg Becker, sold USD 3.6 mill. in stock in late February, under a blind trust. Coincidental? Who knows.

[Eric Loh]

47 minutes ago, Misty said:

Thanks for laying things out clearly.  I've seen speculation on why the middle of the business day failure, rather than waiting until Friday after hours.  Will be interesting to see how this is explained. The situation seemed to be moving rapidly, but that wouldn't be unusual in this type of situation. SVB apparently did a lot of business in China, so some speculate there are bigger issues at play.

 

Interesting too that banks 1) do not have to mark-to-market their bond holdings and 2) aren't required to maintain a better balance between the duration of their assets and their liabilities.  Investors in funds that invest in the same bonds would have already recognized the change in bond prices caused by rising interest rates.  Any equity analyst following this bank should have been well aware of the pending issues.

 

SVB Financial Group has been involved in the Asian markets since the early 1990s and in China since 1999. They have been building relationships with technology companies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists operating in Asia. This will have global contingent effect but limited. 
 

However the contingent in US has not fully realized. Banks are not required to immediately recognize paper losses on bonds, allowing some of the risks to slumber on their books. Many banks could be sitting on unrealized losses because rates have moved up so rapidly. 

[placeholder]

30 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

It seems the CEO, one Greg Becker, sold USD 3.6 mill. in stock in late February, under a blind trust. Coincidental? Who knows.

SVB was a major lender  to the Trump family, particularly to Jared Kushner. At the same time, Ivanka Trump was selected to be an independent member of the Bank's board. So the management does seem to be ethically challenged.

Edited March 11, 2023 by placeholder

[ExpatOilWorker]

5 hours ago, Eric Loh said:

SVB Financial Group has been involved in the Asian markets since the early 1990s and in China since 1999. They have been building relationships with technology companies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists operating in Asia. This will have global contingent effect but limited. 
 

However the contingent in US has not fully realized. Banks are not required to immediately recognize paper losses on bonds, allowing some of the risks to slumber on their books. Many banks could be sitting on unrealized losses because rates have moved up so rapidly. 

Banks already sit on $600 billion of unrealized losses, because of the hold to maturity classification. 

 

[Eric Loh]

2 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Banks already sit on $600 billion of unrealized losses, because of the hold to maturity classification. 

 

The unrealized losses do affect banks when the decreased equity levels could trigger restrictions on their borrowing and also loans. Smaller banks will be likely to be affected more than their bigger counterparts. I think some impact have been felt in the slowdown in the housing sector. A unpleasant medicine to tame inflation by the FED. 

 

[eisfeld]

11 hours ago, Misty said:

Thanks for laying things out clearly.  I've seen speculation on why the middle of the business day failure, rather than waiting until Friday after hours.  Will be interesting to see how this is explained. The situation seemed to be moving rapidly, but that wouldn't be unusual in this type of situation. SVB apparently did a lot of business in China, so some speculate there are bigger issues at play.

According to the order by the Commissioner of Financial Protection and Innovation, SVB was seeing so many outflows ($42B on Thursday) that they ended up with a nearly $1B negative cash balance. They were insolvent already and any delay would have made the situation worse as SVB is forced to sell assets at steep discounts and incurring heavy losses. I don't think their chinese joint venture had anything to do with it.

 

https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf?emrc=bedc09

 

11 hours ago, Misty said:

Interesting too that banks 1) do not have to mark-to-market their bond holdings and 2) aren't required to maintain a better balance between the duration of their assets and their liabilities.  Investors in funds that invest in the same bonds would have already recognized the change in bond prices caused by rising interest rates.  Any equity analyst following this bank should have been well aware of the pending issues.

I think banking regulations are way too lax. Anyone with a bit of background in finance can see how the risk that SVB was taking on was way too high. They essentially bet a huge part of their assets on 1. interest rates not increasing too much in the next decade 2. not many people actually withdrawing too much or further growth in deposits. Yes a few people saw this coming and profited handsomely. It's baffling to me that SVB didn't sell their long term bonds with minimal losses when it became clear that the Fed had to hike rates. Completely sleeping at the wheel.

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, eisfeld said:

According to the order by the Commissioner of Financial Protection and Innovation, SVB was seeing so many outflows ($42B on Thursday) that they ended up with a nearly $1B negative cash balance. They were insolvent already and any delay would have made the situation worse as SVB is forced to sell assets at steep discounts and incurring heavy losses. I don't think their chinese joint venture had anything to do with it.

 

https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf?emrc=bedc09

 

I think banking regulations are way too lax. Anyone with a bit of background in finance can see how the risk that SVB was taking on was way too high. They essentially bet a huge part of their assets on 1. interest rates not increasing too much in the next decade 2. not many people actually withdrawing too much or further growth in deposits. Yes a few people saw this coming and profited handsomely. It's baffling to me that SVB didn't sell their long term bonds with minimal losses when it became clear that the Fed had to hike rates. Completely sleeping at the wheel.

Before Dodd-Frank was weakened under the Trump Administration. Dodd Frank stipulated that any bank with more than 50 billion in assets had to undergo stringent stress tests. After the law was weakened that number was changed to 250 billion. SVB had about 180 billion in assets when it collapsed.

[eisfeld]

35 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Before Dodd-Frank was weakened under the Trump Administration. Dodd Frank stipulated that any bank with more than 50 billion in assets had to undergo stringent stress tests. After the law was weakened that number was changed to 250 billion. SVB had about 180 billion in assets when it collapsed.

I don't think it's OK for a bank with $45B in AUM to collapse either. Actually having such a cut-off just creates an incentive to centralize banking because having funds in smaller banks would be riskier since they don't need to go through the same checks.

 

Banking is such an essential infrastructure for the ecnomomy that the different parts should be strictly shielded from each other. Deposits should not be taken by the bank and invested in high risk, long term vehicles IMHO.

 

Deposits and transfers must be completely separate from investments and loans. Actually banks have to put disclaimers like the following onto certain pages:

 

Quote

Investments are not deposits and are not FDIC Insured. Investments are not bank guaranteed, and may lose value.

 

But how is it ok that banks take deposits into accounts, turn around and invest that money? And on top the depositors are many times not aware what the bank is putting their funds into or that they do that at all.

 

It should simply not be possible for depositors to lose any of their funds no matter what happens.

Everything else is trying to fix individual holes in a sieve. It's too complex and there are too many workarounds.

[nigelforbes]

Media reports are that the $42 bill. bank run that started a couple of days before the banks collapse, was initiated by Venture  Capitalist companies. The VC's were apparently spreading the word for the greater good - short sellers had already spotted the liquidity problem long before and had built substantial positions betting against the bank. 

 

Short selling is one aspect but the white night role of VC's is concerning and raises questions about motives. 

[nigelforbes]

Barrons has written an excellent article on the asset liabilities mismatch at the bank:

 

https://www.barrons.com/articles/svb-silicon-valley-bank-rates-securities-693c931c?siteid=yhoof2

 

You would have thought that by 2023, a US mainland bank would understand not to tie up all their assets in long dated securities, especially when their customer base was so potentially volatile and prone to wide swings, it's peculiar that they did. Was this merely old fashioned lack of competency by bank treasury staff, greed or naivety that rates wouldn't rise. Or perhaps it was over confidence that their business model was so spectacularly good and they had political clout as well, that they couldn't possibly fail........dunno.

Edited March 11, 2023 by nigelforbes

[SunnyinBangrak]

19 hours ago, placeholder said:

SVB was a major lender  to the Trump family, particularly to Jared Kushner. At the same time, Ivanka Trump was selected to be an independent member of the Bank's board. So the management does seem to be ethically challenged.

They might do better under new based leadership. Seeing how he made Twitter a million times better with 90% less workers and returned the free speech guaranteed under 1st amendment to Americans in a couple of weeks after buying Twitter think he could be the man for this task.

 

"Elon Musk is ‘open to the idea’ of buying Silicon Valley Bank as he lays Twitter payments groundwork"

https://fortune.com/2023/03/11/elon-musk-open-to-buying-silicon-valley-bank-as-he-lays-twitter-payments-groundwork/

 

 Tesla shareholders might be feeling nervous on this news. More big share sales incoming??

 

 

[nigelforbes]

It will be surprising if someone hasn't bought the bank or guaranteed ALL the deposits, by Monday. The alternative is that depositors lose money. This will lead to large accounts at other banks being moved to systemically important banks along with the collapse of many smaller ones.

[eisfeld]

2 hours ago, nigelforbes said:

Media reports are that the $42 bill. bank run that started a couple of days before the banks collapse, was initiated by Venture  Capitalist companies. The VC's were apparently spreading the word for the greater good - short sellers had already spotted the liquidity problem long before and had built substantial positions betting against the bank. 

 

Short selling is one aspect but the white night role of VC's is concerning and raises questions about motives. 

Yes of course a lot of VC companies were part of the early run. Silicon Valley Bank was one of the most popular and biggest banks amongst startups. They specifically catered to that market. For example SVB was the default bank you got when incorporating via Stripe Atlas in the past.

 

Word spreads fast among VCs, it's a relatively small community that is always reacting fast and so they will tell their companies to withdraw the funds as soon as they heard things are starting to crumble because the last ones will be holding the bag. Their motives are very clear: protect their investments.

[eisfeld]

2 hours ago, SunnyinBangrak said:

They might do better under new based leadership. Seeing how he made Twitter a million times better with 90% less workers and returned the free speech guaranteed under 1st amendment to Americans in a couple of weeks after buying Twitter think he could be the man for this task.

 

"Elon Musk is ‘open to the idea’ of buying Silicon Valley Bank as he lays Twitter payments groundwork"

https://fortune.com/2023/03/11/elon-musk-open-to-buying-silicon-valley-bank-as-he-lays-twitter-payments-groundwork/

 

 Tesla shareholders might be feeling nervous on this news. More big share sales incoming??

 

 

You do realise that the First Amendment has nothing to do with how private companies run their platforms right? It protects the people against the government.

 

Elon buying SVB? Hahaha. He ran Twitter into considerable financial troubles, their revenue is way way down as advertisers were leaving the platform because of Elons shenanigans. The banks and co-investors he brought on board are seriously regretting the decision and tried to sell some of their assets with steep discounts. Also he did not fire 90% of workers.

[placeholder]

2 hours ago, SunnyinBangrak said:

They might do better under new based leadership. Seeing how he made Twitter a million times better with 90% less workers and returned the free speech guaranteed under 1st amendment to Americans in a couple of weeks after buying Twitter think he could be the man for this task.

 

"Elon Musk is ‘open to the idea’ of buying Silicon Valley Bank as he lays Twitter payments groundwork"

https://fortune.com/2023/03/11/elon-musk-open-to-buying-silicon-valley-bank-as-he-lays-twitter-payments-groundwork/

 

 Tesla shareholders might be feeling nervous on this news. More big share sales incoming??

 

 

Elon Musk? Really? The guy who has admitted he massively overpaid for Twitter and has saddled himself with some very expensive debt to repay? What's more,Twitter is still in danger of going bankrupt.

 

And the balance of your post is not just equally foolish, but also entirely irrelevant.  What has the alleged improvement in Twitter's editorial quality got to do with Musk's financial acumen?

 

Moreover, contrary to your belief, the First Amendment prohibits government censorship. Nothing to do with the editorial decisions of privately owned venues such as Twitter. On top of which, as is his right, Musk has exercised some pretty flagrant censorship of his own at Twitter.

[nigelforbes]

27 minutes ago, eisfeld said:

Yes of course a lot of VC companies were part of the early run. Silicon Valley Bank was one of the most popular and biggest banks amongst startups. They specifically catered to that market. For example SVB was the default bank you got when incorporating via Stripe Atlas in the past.

 

Word spreads fast among VCs, it's a relatively small community that is always reacting fast and so they will tell their companies to withdraw the funds as soon as they heard things are starting to crumble because the last ones will be holding the bag. Their motives are very clear: protect their investments.

Fair comment of course but with Ivanka on the Board and the close relationship between Trump and the CEO, the motive picture is not completely free of political suspicion.

[Misty]

7 hours ago, nigelforbes said:

Media reports are that the $42 bill. bank run that started a couple of days before the banks collapse, was initiated by Venture  Capitalist companies. The VC's were apparently spreading the word for the greater good - short sellers had already spotted the liquidity problem long before and had built substantial positions betting against the bank. 

 

Short selling is one aspect but the white night role of VC's is concerning and raises questions about motives. 

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund has been specifically mentioned in Bloomberg as one of those VC companies withdrawing all deposits from SVB last week, as well as recommending that other related companies do the same  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-11/thiel-s-founders-fund-withdrew-millions-from-silicon-valley-bank

 

Thiel's Founders Fund famously sold all his cryptocurrency in March last year. Thiel then spoke at a cryptocurrency conference in April, telling small investors that bitcoin would go up 100x: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-backer-peter-thiel-reportedly-131804282.html

 

[Hawaiian]

On 3/11/2023 at 4:22 AM, Credo said:

This does not bode well.  I hope the Feds are keeping a close eye on all the banks.  

I agree.  The news has hit bank stock prices really hard, even very conservative banks.  A free fall in the market affects everyone, not just investors.

[nigelforbes]

35 minutes ago, Hawaiian said:

I agree.  The news has hit bank stock prices really hard, even very conservative banks.  A free fall in the market affects everyone, not just investors.

Tomorrow's open should be exciting! ????