Slight wind of panic on the markets. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was closed by US authorities on Friday, marking the largest bank failure in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis.
The American Deposit Guarantee Agency, the FDIC, has taken control of the establishment, which should reopen on Monday under a new name. 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.
The USDC cryptocurrency, known as “stable” because it is theoretically pegged to the dollar, was heckled overnight from Friday to Saturday after its creator, Circle, announced that it had left $3.3 billion in the coffers of SVB. Circle has announced that it has not been able to withdraw all of its deposits with this bank.
FIDC only guarantees deposits up to $250,000 per customer per bank. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen summoned several finance industry regulators on Friday to discuss the situation. She felt that the banking sector remained “resilient”.
No risk of cash shortage
SVB had specialized in the financing of start-ups and had become the 16th American bank by the size of assets: at the end of 2022, it had 209 billion dollars in assets and around 175.4 billion in deposits. His disappearance represents 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 four largest US banks lost $52 billion on the stock market on Thursday and in their wake, Asian and then European banks faltered. In Paris, Société Générale lost 4.49%, BNP Paribas 3.82% and Crédit Agricole 2.48%. For Morgan Stanley analysts, “the funding pressures facing the SVB are very particular” and the other banks are not facing a “liquidity shortage”.