On Friday, Silicon Valley Bank, a lender to some of the biggest names in the technology world, became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis.
Silicon Valley Bank provided banking services to nearly half of the country’s venture capital-backed technology and life-science companies, according to its website, and to over 2,500 venture capital firms. Its swift collapse has sent shock waves through the tech industry, Wall Street and Washington.
Here’s what we know so far about this developing story and what brought Silicon Valley Bank to this point.
The bank took on too many huge deposits, and it was caught by higher interest rates.
Flush with cash from start-ups, Silicon Valley Bank did what most of its rivals do: It kept a small chunk of its deposits in cash, and it used the rest to buy long-term debt like Treasury bonds. Those investments promised steady, modest returns when interest rates remained low. But they were, it turned out, shortsighted. The bank hadn’t considered what was happening in the broader economy, which was overheated after more than a year of pandemic stimulus.
In what would ultimately spell trouble for the bank, start-up funding was also starting to dwindle, leading Silicon Valley Bank’s clients — a mixture of technology start-ups and their executives — to begin withdrawing their money. To fulfill its customers’ requests, the bank had to sell some of its investments at a steep discount.
