The British Treasury wanted to be reassuring. Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt, for his part, seems less serene. He said on Sunday that the bankruptcy of the Californian bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) endangered the British tech sector.
“There is a serious risk to our technology and science sectors, many of which do business with this bank,” Jeremy Hunt said in an interview with UK TV. sky news.
“Looking for a solution”
Silicon Valley Bank, a California bank, was closed on Friday by US authorities and the US Deposit Insurance Agency, the FDIC, took control of the establishment, which is expected to reopen on Monday under a new name. Hunt said he had spoken over the weekend with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, and they are working “at a brisk pace to find a solution” .
He added that this plan would meet the cash needs of companies affected by the implosion of the bank, lender of “some of our most promising and exciting businesses”.
Bailout by the Bank of London?
Little known to the general public, SVB had specialized in the financing of start-ups and had become the 16th American bank by the size of assets. His disappearance is not only the largest bank failure since that of Washington Mutual in 2008 but also the second largest failure of a retail bank in the United States.
The bank was no longer able to cope with the massive withdrawals of its customers, mainly tech players, and its last attempts to raise fresh money were unsuccessful. On Saturday, the British Treasury assured that SVB’s problems were “specific” and had “no implications for other banks operating in the United Kingdom”.
Regarding the British branch of SVB, the Bank of England explained in a statement on Saturday morning that “in the absence of significant additional information”, it “intends to ask the court to place Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited in bank insolvency proceedings”.
The British television channel Sky News reports for its part, without giving more details, that the young Bank of London, opened two years ago, is studying the possibilities of rescuing the British subsidiary of the SVB.