SVB Going Under?

SVB down 60% today and also got downgraded by S&P to one notch above junk (big deal for a bank). Looks like decline is largely due to higher cash burn from SVBs clients, mostly startups who can’t raise new capital and are maxing out their revolvers with the bank.

303 Comments
 

What is the implication for any start ups that bank with them? Is there any risk there?

 
Controversial

Can you people just use the full name? I don't know what the fuck SVB or whatever is. Fuck off

 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

I think it’s Silicon Valley bank. May go under or be acquired for cheap. I have a brother in a start up and he got maybe 20 calls to pull his money yesterday. He said there was a legit run on the bank.

 

I’ll tell you this- heard from an insider. Today was bonus payday for SVB. Commercial type banks pay in March/April. SVB bankers did not revive their bonus. 

Like the unadjusted- only with a little bit extra.
 

All the stock comp that the SVB seniors got is worth nothing now, major fail. Likely will mean they will jump ship first chance they get- maybe back to UBS, whose stock has outperformed almost every bank in the down market given the conservative, WM-focused strategy.

No way cash bonuses for anyone at SVB will be good this year, so would expect high attrition in the coming months across levels and departments. Even if the bank survives the brand is irreparably harmed already, like CS.

 
bronzbomba

All the stock comp that the SVB seniors got is worth nothing now, major fail. Likely will mean they will jump ship first chance they get- maybe back to UBS, whose stock has outperformed almost every bank in the down market given the conservative, WM-focused strategy.

No way cash bonuses for anyone at SVB will be good this year, so would expect high attrition in the coming months across levels and departments. Even if the bank survives the brand is irreparably harmed already, like CS.

My wife's bonus was paid earlier this month, and about in line with last year. She's in credit though.

 

m_1

bronzbomba

All the stock comp that the SVB seniors got is worth nothing now, major fail. Likely will mean they will jump ship first chance they get- maybe back to UBS, whose stock has outperformed almost every bank in the down market given the conservative, WM-focused strategy.

No way cash bonuses for anyone at SVB will be good this year, so would expect high attrition in the coming months across levels and departments. Even if the bank survives the brand is irreparably harmed already, like CS.

My wife's bonus was paid earlier this month, and about in line with last year. She's in credit though.

Wife works there, supposed to get paid tomorrow. Hopefully they don’t got the CS route.

 

No offense, really, but what’s your point? If she was paid at all in stock, her comp isn’t in line with last year anymore. (If it is, that’s because the unvested portion of last year’s bonus has collapsed in value too). 
 

And the op was referring to next year’s bonus cycle - the one that will come after, not before, the liquidity crisis. 

 

bronzbomba

All the stock comp that the SVB seniors got is worth nothing now, major fail. Likely will mean they will jump ship first chance they get- maybe back to UBS, whose stock has outperformed almost every bank in the down market given the conservative, WM-focused strategy.

No way cash bonuses for anyone at SVB will be good this year, so would expect high attrition in the coming months across levels and departments. Even if the bank survives the brand is irreparably harmed already, like CS.

Per business insider when those seniors from UBS joined they all signed 3 year lock ups

 

Wonder what this means for all those big name dudes (Auerbach, King, Jackey, etc) that joined during their hiring frenzy. Are they just gonna go back to where they were at/can they even go back or would they try and stick it out? 

 

Best SVB and its employees can hope for is to get acquired - otherwise with the massive losses in deposits / loans they’re seeing they’ll have to do a massive RIF asap to cut costs

 

It’s a bank, they bank like half of the startups in the valley. A huge lender. But they got pretty famous last year on this forum when they poached the whole entire ubs tech practice. Basically gutted them dry with good pay, analysts to managing directors.

 

Holy shit. Remember how many companies got fucked over because of Lehman? I'm so curious whats going to happen to all of those companies that are going to have to deal w/ SVB's possible bankruptcy. Not to mention tech is in a pitfall this year, and probably next. Silicon Valley looking like its gonna burn

 

I don't think so. It's more that they had massive inflows during the COVID boom when every Tiger shitco was opening up SVB corporate treasury accounts. They had to deploy that capital and bought fixed income when rates were low and are taking losses now that they are higher. Plenty of other banks are gonna take losses on their bond portfolios, but SVB was/is uniquely levered to the COVID bubble.

 

If anyone thinks this is a Lehman they're smoking crack. Not great for the company / shareholders and I'm sure management with SBC are pissed but worst case they'll take a (painful) bath on their MBS portfolio and raise capital at a discount to keep the lights on. Very low chance they go under IMO but a few years of pain probably head.

EDIT: I was wrong lmaoooo

 

What you're missing is the 15bn in short term borrowing they took in 2022 to already keep the lights on. No one wants to give them debt and they're near junk bond levels. They have 5 bn in cash and like 50% of their assets in MBS.

 

Little misleading. It’s all about how quickly they’re going to burn through deposits. Things will improve for these start ups in the coming months and there were signs of the cash burn stabilizing. I don’t think them selling the AFS portfolio warrants the kind of drop we saw yesterday. Obviously this quarter must have been brutal for them in terms of deposit burn. It’s crazy because when they reported only a few months ago things looked okay and no one was fretting about some big drop in deposits, but should’ve been accounting for it because it basically just took a bad half quarter 

 

Market is fucked today, I work on a rates desk and we have exposure with them. Probably going to take a small hit. My MD and the BSDs in capital markets have been on calls all day trying to figure out where else we may have exposure. They ARE NOT the only bank that got really long long duration assets. Funding costs are way up and their long dated assets are tanking.

 

Putting a price target at 25 when after brokerages sell off all their inventory

 

Won’t happen but I hope Wells buys at least the seniors. Would be nice for our SF office to not be shit anymore 

 

Recall- Wells cannot acquire anyone at all. They have restrictions from the Fed. Wells is out of the acquiring game for now. 

Like the unadjusted- only with a little bit extra.
 
Banker4LIFO

Wonder if the IB segment gets bought. Know some friends at other firms who've said they heard their firms were looking at buying one. Could make sense here assuming no one buys all of SVB and no one doing that.

Nobody buys a distressed IB team of 50 guys. That’s a very recent piece of their business that is now worthless and filled with people who are mad about their 2023 comp

 

fuck no the FED won't intervene. this bank can fail and there won't be any real consequences in the financial market

 

I’m sure you could find people who would’ve said the same about Bear and Lehman. This is not a 1:1 comparison but all it took was 24hrs for a top-20 bank by asset size to go from apparently solvent to FDIC receivership. This is a serious situation.

 

“Yeah man I’m doing IB at the FDIC this summer. Pretty sweet gig”

Of course you have to look for other roles lmao. The firm as we know it is gone.

 

Looks like someone forgot their FDIC questions from their series/licensing exams

 
Funniest

The fall of Hipster Soy Capital is upon us. Big Tech (he/him) will kneel in defeat before the one true apex predator of the capitalism kingdom, Wall Street. I come to you as the herald of a changing of the guard.

What great thing has VC done lately besides WeWork and Theranos?

Do not fear the economic collapse. A new era, an era of Giga-Chadism is upon us. Once again people will dress in suits and ties, instead of some West Coast athleisure degeneracy. People will trade away their workplace Latinx climate change diversity seminars for hookers and blow. They will go through their offices, find a bottle of Macallan 25 sitting in a supply closet, the bottle covered in dust as no one has been drinking scotch in the workplace for quite some time, and they will say, "hello old friend." People will put aside their wine bars for tasteful banter with GF and RETVRN to models and bottles.

Nature is healing. Embrace the chaos as a wildfire that clears away old brush for a new forest to grow.

 

These companies are going to lose billions of deposits... Saw somewhere there's like $150B+ of unsecured deposits. No amount of brand equity is gonna save those relationships

Also most of these relationships are with struggling startups, not the financially stable (or at least kinda financially stable) unicorns that GS/MS actually wants to deal with. BBs want zero to do with volatile startups that max out their revolvers and go bankrupt (see: why SVB went kaput)

 

About 97% of SVB deposits are structured over the FDIC limit. I have 3 clients with SVB funds- all In the $20MM-$80MM range. They may have lost everything. 

Like the unadjusted- only with a little bit extra.
 

Cramer recommended Lehman and Bear literally until the day before they collapsed. Why would anyone ever listen to Cramer?

 

When clients can’t access their funds beyond the $250k FDIC insurance limit, there are no more relationships. That platform has no value. 
 

There will be wave of startup bankruptcies unless the government is decides to make depositors whole. They shouldn’t. You decided to keep your money at a shitty little bank that was entirely exposed to high growth sectors and didn’t know how to manage duration risk, that’s the risk you took.

 

Start looking, you should have started this morning. Now you need to wait until Monday.

SVB is done, they can't keep the lights on and you think they will be bringing in Analysts and Associates? Start hitting up WF, RBC and EBs that are in growth mode. 

 

Despite what many on here are saying, I work at SVB Securities and the bank is insulated from the commercial bank and will continue to do business. 

This may be as an independent spinout (basically business as usual with a different name) or being acquired by another larger firm.

 

LMAOOO dude do not throw inaccurate BS like this on a thread. If you want to cope, go do it in your moms basement. There are prospectives here who might just read this BS you commented and think they are safe. Let them start making moves and trying to figure out where to land. 

SVB failed big time by being dumb and brought down some startups with them LOL. 

 

Dude I also work for SVB Securities and he’s right. We’re pretty insulated from the commercial banking side and have been operating like business as usual. We don’t use the balance sheet and primarily generate revenue from M&A advisory fees.

Either we get carved out as an independent entity or get sold to a bigger platform. The latter would mean the junior folks (like myself) are probably out of a job. There seems to be a lot of misinformation / misunderstanding about SVB Securities vs Silicon Valley Bank. We never even shared an office with the commercial banking side of the firm. Most folks in my group are actually pretty optimistic about the prospect of becoming an independent firm. But there’s obviously still a lot of uncertainty rn.

 

Well I guess we will see what happens and if your little hypothesis comes correct.

 

I keep hearing a few analysts from the firm say this. The reality is the MDs saying the investment bank is fine have no idea what will happen next. Even if depositors are made whole, the parent company equity value will likely go to zero. An acquisition by another firm will not necessarily save the IB staff. Will be very hard to win mandates after causing so many start-ups massive liquidity issues and potential losses; even more so given it is entirely SVB's fault and was completely preventable by proper asset-to-liability management which is banking 101. Very poor leadership by the bank to get in this position. 

 

Anonymous Monkey

Despite what many on here are saying, I work at SVB Securities and the bank is insulated from the commercial bank and will continue to do business. 

This may be as an independent spinout (basically business as usual with a different name) or being acquired by another larger firm.

-Lehman M&A team 2008

 

you realize your firm wont be able to make payroll right?

The FDIC is acting as a receiver, which typically means it will liquidate the bank’s assets to pay back its customers, including depositors and creditors.

any cash on the bs they are using to pay you guys is fair game.  any fees you are generating can go straight to creditors.

they will try and sell off assets as quickly as possible (or wind down operations to stop paying you salaries).

 

This is factually correct.

Source from original document: https://www.svb.com/globalassets/library/uploadedfiles/diversity-equity…

They didn't have a C-level risk director until the Kim Olson was hired in January, so it was on Jay Ersapah below out of their UK office. Kim Olson didn't have time to figure out which way was up probably. This is on Ersapah and the SIVB CFO.

Screenshot of SIVB risk director

 

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