LMAO. Can't even believe how many people were confidently asserting that nothing was wrong yesterday. If you had more than $250k in SVB yesterday you probably just took a huge haircut.
Hundreds of startups will become illiquid as a result of SVB's collapse, and there will be major layoffs here in the next 90 days as founders realize that they lost their funds and cannot raise in the current VC environment.
Didn't he say sometjing like "while believe we have a hell lotta smart people under this roof, it is a lot easier to be first"? After all, it wasn't brains that got him in his chair, earning the big bucks, he can assure you!
I’m here for one reason alone. To guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. And standing here tonight I’m afraid that I. Don’t. Hear. A. Thing.
You most definitely will. SVB already fire-sold 21Bn in MBS and took a 1.8Bn loss on that. Someone is eating that loss....
Separately, this is going to cause a lot of finance vultures to look at other banks who also have MBS portfolios on their books. The show's only beginning.
Is there any reason the FDIC itself cant just hold onto the bonds until they mature? The federal government doesnt need liquidity the same way a bank does, they wouldn't need to sell them for less than face value.
Edit: this is actually a serious question, if someone knows the actual answer.
I understand that ideally the government wouldn't want to hold onto the bonds, but is there any statutory (or other real) reason why they would _have_ to sell them at less than face value? If you could guarantee 100% of deposits could be returned by just holding onto the bonds until maturity, that seems like a worthwhile trade.
Past losses aside, the press release says that there are about $180B in deposits with the bank holding about $210B in assets. Assuming the FDIC liquidates and restructures the bank, I don’t see why deposits could not be made whole.
If there were fewer assets then deposits, then yes the 250k+ accounts are probably out of luck.
The "assets" are actually held-to-maturity securities (bonds) that are yielding less than the risk free rate. Who would want to buy a bond that yields 2% when you can buy treasures that yield 4%. So while they might have $210B in paper assets but there's no chance they will be unable to unload them without taking a loss, putting the bank upside down.
> Who would want to buy a bond that yields 2% when you can buy treasures that yield 4%.
Whatever bank/organization that wants to have SVB's customers, probably. If an even bigger bank comes in, one which can take on those lukewarm assets for a decade without risk, then they can immediately position themselves as the "new SVB" and get a bunch of VCs and startups as customers. I assume that they could stand to profit some from such an arrangement, but I'm not a banker, so maybe not?
And restructuring tends not be stay “gov owned” - the government assumes ownership to stabilize the market then tries to sell off the business to another business. Often there’s some incentive to assume a massive amount of customers and assets. The gov may even take on the intermediate loss (the FCID is an insurance agency after all).
Yeah, I can see why in general the government wouldn't want to hold on to assets, but bonds are kind of a special class of asset in that they do eventually mature and will naturally just be something they don't need to manage (within a relatively short time period too). If you expect that the sell off could take years to complete, some of those bonds will be halfway to maturity by the time they're sold.
If I'm the FDIC and I have the opportunity to return 100% of the funds to depositors at the cost of just holding on to a bond for a few more years than I otherwise would, that seems like a tradeoff I'd make to stabilize a lot of companies. (I'm of course biased here)
Will those assets still be worth $210B as the days tick by? I'm not a macro financial analyst, but I have to imagine trying to liquidate $210B of bonds, stocks, etc. will cause at least some of that value to fall – that's a big number.
Once the FDIC kicks in they can sell off to a different bank which can absorb them without touching the open market. Alternatively the FDIC can guarantee the bank for the duration necessary to sell assets slowly. They could likely sell the bank as a whole to another bank if assets>liabilities without too much disruption.
If someone well capitalized buys the bank, then they don't need to liquidate. The bonds aren't worthless, they just trade much lower now that interest rates have risen, however if you can wait until they mature you will get your money + interest.
No, this isn't true. SVB has some unknown amount of cash and other assets on hand. We have no idea what that is right now, or what percentage this is of the shortfall.
Someone will buy SVB, and they will put capital in as part of the purchase.
Well, and until everything is sorted all your deposits above 250k are illiquid now. So, I guess one way to not go under is to find a bank that gives you a generous credit line against whatever deposits there are at SVB. At huge risk margin, and quite a discount on the deposits. If there are such banks willing to do so, that is.
No one knows for sure. We don't know what the value of their HTM MBS actually is on the open market.
What we do know for sure though, is that this process will take months, maybe years, to play out and many startups will run out of money long before this is resolved.
When you see how much of a massive everything-bubble we were (are?) in, I can see where people are coming from on this one. Time to get some sanity back into this economy, and the people who will hurt the most are those who also benefited the most in the past 3 years (crypto-bros, useless startups with dumb valuations, etc.)
I think people are excited that we can get back to money tracking with actual value generation and not financial hacking.
Events like these are similar to Enron and Theranos. No, I'm not excited to see "the energy industry" or "the medical industry fail", but that's not really what it was, was it?
>Do you think it's strange people are excited for the economy to fail?
People knew free money was dangerous, planned for a return to sanity (QT) in 2018-2019, and were financially punished for acting responsibly by believing the Fed would follow its roadmap.
They may get their day in the sun now and I cant blame them for being happy at the first signs of a temporary return to reality.
If people have to be reassured to begin with, it's already over. Money only exists because people keep believing it does. As soon as they stop believing it's gone.
> Hundreds of startups will become illiquid as a result of SVB's collapse,
I know SVB was like a "high tech bank" that partnered with things like Stripe Atlas, but is there any reason that startups were using it for their regular operating funds? Other than the name, was there something that actually made this bank particularly suitable for them?
They 'understand' startups. That is, they were willing to work with founders of new ventures, didn't require insane proof of provenance of funds (because suddenly millions of dollars would appear overnight), and would support founders with mortgages, for example, that were running companies that weren't yet necessarily profitable but were well-funded nevertheless.
They were proactive in incubators and allowed new companies to open accounts and make large deposits right away, when many mainstream banks wouldn’t or were too slow. I’m guessing plenty of startups stuck with them through inertia at least.
Did you also deposit 100M the same day? Try opening line of credit the same day: startup banks will open it without any issues as long as you have cash.
I had to explain to chase large wire transfers after banking with them for years. I had small amounts of money held in AML lock for months with BofA and Chase.
But it works better at a criminal bank. Particularly one that might open a bunch of extra accounts for you when you aren't looking. Obviously that means opening the first account won't be the problem either.
Get a big criminal bank and they won't freeze your account for dumb reasons. Or smart reasons.
So just follow the settlements with the federal government, its advertising.
Yep... I bet this is about to pull forward a lot of startup death. Gun now to VC heads to save things. Forcing decisions they were hoping they wouldn't have to make for at least another 6-12 months.
They become illiquid because they don't have access to their money that was in SVB. They can't make payroll, can't pay vendors and landlords. The employees will leave first. Vendors next.
But normally, they will be bought by another bank coming Monday and resume business.
The fdic assigns a buyer and pays the buyer, from what I understand.
Edit. I just realized, in the us, if there is no bidder, the fdic can close down the bank or run it itself.
Bridge loans, DES, convertible notes, etc..., I'm sure their were loan "products" for startups similar to helocs (likely what put them in the hole). The appetite for crypto/fintech startups was huge during the pandemic and likely pressured them to get creative on products and overleveraged. It's all unwinding now.
Unfortunately, harder now for startups, mind that all those startup dreams from laid off FANG staff just got their rug pulled.
No. It sounds like they bought a bunch of safe, long-term load-backed assets. When interest rates went up, the value of the assets went down. This isn't a problem if no one withdraws before the loans are due, but if they do, they have to sell the assets that declined in value.
What did James Ray say again about FTX? Something along the lines of "a group of highly unsophiscated people"? Man, the CFOs of the affected start-ups should all look for a new job. By the way, preventing things like that is something a good MBA does.
The trouble in a bank run is that it’s impossible for everyone to have gotten their money out yesterday. Those first in line caused the collapse, the rest are out of luck. Nice to hear you have lucky friends.
Everyone who can read a balance sheet could figure out there was a lot of trouble after the announcement of the sold securities for a significant loss. The VCs telling portfolio companies to ride it out may have been looking for bagholders to ensure that they can get their own money out.
Don't know why this is being downvoted - if a bank takes $100 and keeps $20 liquid while investing $80, and then everyone comes for their money, the first $20 is available but the rest will be slower if not completely lost. If everyone tried to take their money yesterday some people will win but a large number will lose... If there wasn't a run on the bank chances are it could have (slightly?) weathered the storm.
VC firms don't generally have tons of cash sitting around compared to their fund size. When you raise a fund, an LP does't just hand you $20 mil, then simply promise to send you up to $20 mil when you ask for it.
Hundreds of startups will become illiquid as a result of SVB's collapse, and there will be major layoffs here in the next 90 days as founders realize that they lost their funds and cannot raise in the current VC environment.