Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank was founded in 1983 as a California state-chartered bank and a member of the Federal Reserve System, headquartered in Santa Clara. At the end of 1983 the bank had assets of about $18 million, and it grew gradually through 2019.⁠[1][2][3]

The bank’s holding company, Silicon Valley Bancshares, was incorporated in Delaware in March 1999 as a bank holding company and financial holding company, with Silicon Valley Bank as its principal subsidiary. The company described itself as having focused for more than 20 years on entrepreneurs and companies in the technology, life science, private equity, and premium wine industries.⁠[2][2][2][2]

By its annual report for fiscal 2005, the holding company had been renamed SVB Financial Group. In 2005, because the company failed to file its quarterly report (Form 10-Q) for the second quarter on time, purchases of and transfers into the company stock fund in the employee 401(k)/ESOP plan were suspended; the auditor concluded that, because of material weaknesses, the company’s internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2005.⁠[4][5][4]

As of its 2004 annual report, Silicon Valley Bank served more than 10,000 clients across the United States through 25 regional offices in the country, with one subsidiary each in England and India; its U.K. business, Silicon Valley Bank UK, entered the British market in 2004 to serve the local technology and life sciences sectors. By the 2005 annual report, the client count had risen to more than 11,000 and the number of regional offices to 27.⁠[2][6][4]

In January 2019, SVB Financial Group acquired an investment banking business that operated for a time as SVB Leerink and was later renamed SVB Securities; it ran as a largely autonomous subsidiary serving capital markets and advisory needs in the innovation economy. From January 1 of that year, CEO Greg Becker also served as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.⁠[7][1][7][3]

Between 2019 and 2021, SVB Financial Group’s assets grew from about $71 billion to more than $211 billion, roughly tripling; from year-end 2018 to year-end 2021 its assets grew 271 percent, compared with 29 percent for the banking industry as a whole. Funds that clients obtained through IPOs, secondary offerings, SPAC fundraising, venture capital investments, and other financing events flowed into the bank as deposits, and the company invested a large share of those deposits in long-dated securities.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

Because of its rapid asset growth, the Federal Reserve moved it from the regional banking portfolio to the large and foreign banking portfolio beginning in February 2021, and the San Francisco Fed formed a new supervisory team of about 20 people that March; in June 2021, the company’s average consolidated assets exceeded $100 billion, making it a Category IV firm under the 2019 tailoring rule.⁠[3][3][3]

On July 1, 2021, SVB Financial Group completed its acquisition of Boston Private Financial Holdings, a Boston wealth management and private banking firm, and Boston Private Bank & Trust Company merged into Silicon Valley Bank that day; the combined private banking and wealth management business was led by Anthony DeChellis and Yvette Butler. The acquisition had been announced on January 4, 2021, and received regulatory approvals in May and June of that year.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In December 2021, the company also acquired the research firm MoffettNathanson, expanding its equity research coverage to technology companies.⁠[1]

In 2022, interest rates rose and activity in the technology sector slowed. The Federal Reserve’s review concluded that the bank’s management focused its interest rate risk management on short-run profits and protection against rate decreases and removed its interest rate hedges; in April 2022, responding to a breach of its interest rate risk limit, the company changed its modeling assumptions on deposit duration rather than addressing the actual risk. Beginning in July 2022, when the company first became subject to enhanced prudential standards, the bank repeatedly failed its own internal liquidity stress tests.⁠[3][3][3][3]

On the supervisory side, the San Francisco Fed issued three supervisory findings in May 2022 stating that the firm’s governance and risk-management practices were “below supervisory expectations”; it downgraded the bank in June 2022 and began working on an enforcement action in August, but did not finalize it before the bank failed. The August 2022 large financial institution rating assessed governance and controls as “Deficient-1.”⁠[3][3][9][9][3][3]

As of December 31, 2022, SVB Financial Group had consolidated total assets of $211.8 billion, investment securities of $120.1 billion, loans of $74.3 billion, deposits of $173.1 billion, and stockholders’ equity of $16.0 billion; net income available to common stockholders for 2022 was $1.509 billion, and it had 8,553 full-time equivalent employees at year-end. Its businesses comprised Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Capital, SVB Private, and SVB Securities; overseas it had a U.K. bank subsidiary and branches in Germany, Canada, and the Cayman Islands, and it held a 50 percent stake in its Chinese joint venture bank, SPD Silicon Valley Bank.⁠[1][1][1][10][1][1]

At that point, about 94 percent of its deposits were uninsured, and venture capital–backed companies accounted for more than half of its deposits. The bank had invested a large share of its deposits in long-dated, held-to-maturity agency mortgage-backed securities, and at the end of 2022 that held-to-maturity portfolio had a weighted-average duration of 6.2 years.⁠[3][3][3]

On March 8, 2023, SVB Financial Group announced that it had sold about $21 billion of available-for-sale securities, which would produce an after-tax loss of about $1.8 billion in the first quarter; it also planned public offerings of $1.25 billion of common stock and $500 million of depositary shares in mandatory convertible preferred stock, and it had signed an agreement with General AtlanticGeneral AtlanticGeneral Atlantic is a global investment firm founded in 1980 that grew out of Chuck Feeney’s family investment business. Growth equity is at its core, and through GA Credit, BeyondNetZero and Actis it also invests in credit, the energy transition and infrastructure. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management across all strategies were about $130 billion.Open the full entry to buy a further $500 million of common stock at the public offering price, with Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and SVB Securities as book-running managers. The company also planned to increase term borrowings by $15 billion to $30 billion.⁠[10][10][11][10][3]

The same day, Silvergate Capital CorporationSilvergateSilvergate is a U.S. financial brand once known for banking services to digital asset companies; the related entities include the parent company Silvergate Capital Corporation and its former bank subsidiary Silvergate Bank. The bank opened in 1988 and once operated the SEN U.S. dollar payment network; it began a voluntary liquidation in 2023, has since ceased banking operations, and has repaid all deposits. The parent company completed a Chapter 11 reorganization in March 2026, with new management handling its retained assets and future development.Open the full entry announced that it would wind down operations and voluntarily liquidate Silvergate Bank, which further affected depositor sentiment. The Federal Reserve’s Office of Inspector General later concluded that the bank’s public communication of its capital-raising plan was ineffective and, together with other market events, contributed to the massive deposit outflows.⁠[3][12]

On March 9, 2023, withdrawals of uninsured deposits accelerated sharply; the bank lost more than $40 billion in deposits that day, and management expected more than $100 billion more to leave the next day, together about 85 percent of its deposit base. The Federal Reserve’s review attributed the run to uncertainty around the technology sector, possible action by credit rating agencies, and highly correlated withdrawals by a concentrated network of venture capital investors and technology firms fueled by social media. That evening, the Federal Reserve notified the FDIC of the bank’s possible failure.⁠[3][3][3][3][9]

On Friday, March 10, 2023, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed Silicon Valley Bank and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as receiver. The FDIC created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara and transferred all insured deposits to it, promised that insured depositors would have access to their deposits no later than the morning of Monday, March 13, and said it would pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend within the next week. The bank then had 17 branches in California and Massachusetts; as of December 31, 2022, it had total assets of about $209 billion and deposits of about $175.4 billion. It was the first FDIC-insured institution to fail in 2023.⁠[13][14][14][14][14][14][14]

The same day, SVB Financial Group reported that it was no longer the bank’s parent company and terminated its previously announced stock offerings; trading in its common stock and preferred depositary shares on Nasdaq was halted. Some companies with deposits at Silicon Valley Bank sold their uninsured deposit claims that day at 90 cents on the dollar in order to make payroll. With more than $200 billion in assets when it failed, Silicon Valley Bank was at the time the largest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.⁠[15][15][16][9][17]

On March 11, the FDIC began marketing the Deposit Insurance National Bank and coordinated with the Federal Reserve on considering a systemic risk exception. On Sunday, March 12, the FDIC received only one viable bid, which did not meet the statutory least-cost test; two other bids were invalid because they lacked approval from the bidders’ boards. The boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve voted unanimously to recommend the systemic risk exception, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen approved it after consulting with the President.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

That evening, Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg issued a joint statement announcing that Silicon Valley Bank would be resolved in a manner that fully protected all depositors, who would have access to all of their money starting March 13, and that taxpayers would bear no losses from the resolution; shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders would not be protected, senior management had been removed, and any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund from protecting uninsured depositors would be recovered by a special assessment on banks as required by law. Signature Bank, closed by New York the same day, received the same exception, and the Federal Reserve separately announced additional funding for eligible depository institutions.⁠[18][18][18][18][18][18]

In their recommendations, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve concluded that a least-cost resolution of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would intensify runs and liquidity pressures on other U.S. banks; the Federal Reserve also established the Bank Term Funding Program under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act.⁠[9][9][9]

On March 13, the FDIC transferred all deposits, including uninsured deposits, and substantially all assets to a newly created full-service bridge bank, Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N.A., with Tim Mayopoulos, former president and CEO of Fannie Mae, as CEO; the bridge bank resumed normal operations that day.⁠[19][19][19]

The same day, HSBC Holdings announced that its HSBC UK Bank plc was acquiring Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited for £1, with the transaction completing immediately; as of March 10, that bank had loans of about £5.5 billion and deposits of about £6.7 billion.⁠[6][6][6]

SVB Financial Group’s board also formed a restructuring committee of five independent directors that day to explore strategic alternatives for the holding company, SVB Capital, and SVB Securities and to address the holding company’s roughly $3 billion of debt, retaining Centerview Partners, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Alvarez & Marsal as financial, legal, and restructuring advisors.⁠[20][20][20]

On March 17, 2023, SVB Financial Group filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, in a case captioned In re SVB Financial Group, No. 23-10367; SVB Securities and SVB Capital’s funds and general partner entities were not included in the filing. The company estimated that it had about $2.2 billion of liquidity, about $3.3 billion in principal of unsecured notes, and $3.7 billion of preferred equity. Chief Restructuring Officer William Kosturos said the Chapter 11 process would help preserve value while it evaluated strategic alternatives for assets such as SVB Capital and SVB Securities.⁠[16][16][21][21][21][21][21]

The same day, Nasdaq notified the company that it no longer met continued listing requirements; trading in its common stock (ticker SIVB) and preferred depositary shares would be suspended on March 28, and the company said it would not appeal.⁠[16][16][16]

On March 20, citing interest from multiple parties, the FDIC extended the bidding process and allowed separate bids for the bridge bank and its subsidiary Silicon Valley Private Bank. On March 26, the FDIC announced a purchase and assumption agreement under which First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company would assume all deposits and loans of the bridge bank: as of March 10, the bridge bank had total assets of about $167 billion and deposits of about $119 billion; the transaction included the purchase of about $72 billion of assets at a discount of $16.5 billion, with about $90 billion of securities and other assets remaining in receivership for disposition by the FDIC. The FDIC also received equity appreciation rights in First Citizens BancShares common stock with a potential value of up to $500 million and entered into a loss-share agreement with the buyer on commercial loans.⁠[22][23][23][23][23][23]

The FDIC estimated the cost of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure to the Deposit Insurance Fund at about $20 billion, with the exact amount to be determined when the receivership terminates. The 17 former branches began operating as First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company on March 27.⁠[23][23][13]

First Citizens BancShares set out the terms in its March 27 filing: about $110.1 billion of assets acquired (including about $72.1 billion of loans) and about $59.0 billion of liabilities assumed (including about $56.5 billion of customer deposits), with no premium paid for the deposits; the initial payment was a five-year, $35 billion purchase money note at a fixed rate of 3.50 percent, and the FDIC also provided a five-year, $70 billion line of credit. The deal excluded crypto assets, the Chinese joint venture bank SPD Silicon Valley Bank, the Cayman Islands branch, and the German, Canadian, and Hong Kong branches (for the last three the buyer received an option to purchase), and no assets or liabilities of the parent, SVB Financial Group, were taken on.⁠[24][24][24][24][24][24][24][24]

On April 5, 2023, the FDIC announced that, as receiver, it would sell the securities portfolios retained from the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank receiverships; the Silicon Valley Bank portion had a face value of about $87 billion, mainly agency mortgage-backed securities and related instruments, and BlackRockBlackRockBlackRock is a publicly traded investment management company headquartered in New York, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink and seven others and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker BLK); its businesses include the iShares family of exchange-traded funds and the Aladdin investment and risk management platform. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management totaled $15.3 trillion.Open the full entry’s BlackRock Financial Market Advisory was retained to sell them in a gradual and orderly way.⁠[25][25][25]

On April 18, 2023, Daniel Beck resigned as chief financial officer of SVB Financial Group; on April 19, Gregory Becker resigned as a director and chief executive officer and, at the company’s request, agreed to provide consulting services as needed at no cost. The restructuring committee then appointed Nicholas Grossi of Alvarez & Marsal as interim chief financial officer.⁠[26][26][26]

On April 28, 2023, the Federal Reserve Board released the review of its supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank led by Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr, along with more than two dozen documents containing confidential supervisory information. In his cover letter, Barr characterized the failure as “a textbook case of mismanagement by the bank.” The report set out four key takeaways: the bank’s board of directors and management failed to manage their risks; supervisors did not fully appreciate the extent of its vulnerabilities as it grew in size and complexity; when supervisors did identify vulnerabilities, they did not take sufficient steps to ensure the bank fixed them quickly enough; and the Federal Reserve’s tailoring approach in response to the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, together with a shift in supervisory policy, reduced standards, increased complexity, and made supervision less assertive. At the time of its failure, the bank had 31 unaddressed safety and soundness supervisory warnings, about triple the average for peer banks.⁠[27][27][3][27][27][27][27]

Barr also argued that social media, a highly networked and concentrated depositor base, and technology may have fundamentally changed the speed of bank runs, and that while the proximate cause of the failure was a liquidity run, the underlying issue was concern about its solvency. Federal Reserve Chair Powell said he agreed with and supported Barr’s recommendations to improve rules and supervisory practices.⁠[3][3][27]

The same day, the U.S. Government Accountability Office delivered a preliminary review to the House Financial Services Committee: from 2019 to 2021, the total assets of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank grew 198 percent and 134 percent respectively, far above the 33 percent median growth of 19 peer banks; both banks relied on uninsured deposits and managed their risks inadequately; and the San Francisco Fed rated Silicon Valley Bank satisfactory until its first large bank rating in 2022. The report found that regulators had identified concerns over five years but did not escalate supervisory actions in time to prevent the failures.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

On May 11, 2023, the FDIC board proposed the special assessment required by the systemic risk determination: it estimated that about $15.8 billion of the cost of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failures was attributable to protecting uninsured depositors and proposed to charge about 113 banking organizations based on their uninsured deposits at the end of 2022 (excluding the first $5 billion), with no institutions under $5 billion in assets subject to it. The final rule of November 16 raised the estimate to about $16.3 billion and set an annual rate of 13.4 basis points, collected over eight quarters beginning in the first quarter of 2024, applying to about 114 banking organizations.⁠[28][28][28][28][29][29][29][29]

On June 17, 2023, following a bidding process approved by the bankruptcy court, SVB Financial Group signed an agreement to sell the SVB Securities investment banking business to a management bidder group led by SVB Securities CEO and founder Jeff Leerink and backed by funds managed by The Baupost Group, for cash, the assumption of certain liabilities, and a synthetic equity instrument initially representing a 5 percent equity interest; the research firm MoffettNathanson was not included in the transaction.⁠[30][30][30][30]

On September 25, 2023, the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its material loss review of Silicon Valley Bank, finding that the bank failed because of several factors: its business model concentrated its customer base and uninsured deposits; management emphasized growth without putting adequate controls in place; it invested much of its deposit inflow in long-term securities during a period of low interest rates; and when rates rose it did not heed early warning signs, removed its hedges, and carried large unrealized losses on held-to-maturity securities. The report’s three supervisory findings were that the regional banking supervisory approach did not evolve with the bank’s growth, that its transition to the large bank portfolio was not handled effectively, and that examiners should have scrutinized more closely the risks rising rates posed to its securities portfolio. The Federal Reserve Board concurred with the report’s recommendations.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12][12]

On January 9, 2024, SVB Financial Group signed a restructuring support agreement with members of an ad hoc group of senior noteholders and the official committee of unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy case, covering the treatment of claims and interests, the creation of a liquidating trust, and the formation of a new holding company; the same day, SVB Capital announced new leadership and a new operating structure. On January 26, the company filed its first Chapter 11 plan of reorganization with the bankruptcy court.⁠[31][31][31][32]

In March 2024, SVB Financial Group sued the FDIC seeking to recover more than $1.9 billion it had held at the bank when it failed. On March 18, the company agreed in the bankruptcy case to sell all partnership interests in its Indian subsidiary, SVB Global Services India LLP, to First Citizens BancShares and its affiliates, subject to approval by the bankruptcy court and Indian regulators.⁠[17][33][33][33]

On May 2, 2024, SVB Financial Group signed an agreement to sell its investment platform business, SVB Capital, to a newly created entity affiliated with Pinegrove Capital PartnersPinegrove Capital PartnersPinegrove Capital Partners is a US investment firm set up in 2023 through a partnership between Brookfield Asset Management and Sequoia Heritage, providing secondary liquidity and structured capital solutions to the venture capital and growth-stage technology ecosystem; its secondary strategy operates as Pinegrove Opportunity Partners, and after acquiring SVB Capital in 2024 it has operated its venture investment platform as Pinegrove Venture Partners.Open the full entry and backed by permanent capital from Brookfield Asset Management and Sequoia Heritage, for a combination of cash and other economic consideration, subject to approval by the bankruptcy court and regulators.⁠[34][34][34]

On August 2, 2024, Chief Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York entered an order confirming SVB Financial Group’s second amended plan of reorganization. The plan took effect on November 7: some of the company’s assets were transferred to a liquidating trust established solely to liquidate and distribute them, and the reorganized company became a subsidiary of a new parent; senior noteholders received their pro rata share of new parent common stock or cash plus Class A-1 trust units, holders of subordinated notes and preferred stock received trust units, common stockholders received no distribution, and all common stock was canceled. On November 6, the company abandoned all of its equity interests in Silicon Valley Bank for no consideration.⁠[35][36][36][36][36][36][36][36][36]

On the effective date, all directors, including board chair Beverly Kay Matthews, and officers including the chief restructuring officer left their positions. On January 24, 2025, the company filed a Form 15 terminating its securities registration and reported that, under the plan, it had become a wholly owned subsidiary of a new corporation, MNSN Holdings Inc.⁠[36][36][37][37][37]

On January 16, 2025, the FDIC, as receiver, sued 17 former executives and directors of Silicon Valley Bank, including former CEO Greg Becker, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that during a period of actual or likely rising interest rates they ignored clear warnings, including repeated breaches of the bank’s own interest-rate-risk models, in order to boost short-term income and the stock price, conduct it called negligent, grossly negligent, and a breach of fiduciary duties that caused the bank billions of dollars in losses. The defendants’ liability has yet to be determined by the court.⁠[38][38][38][38][38]

On October 23, 2025, Judge Noël Wise of the Northern District of California ruled that the FDIC had sufficiently alleged that Becker, former chief financial officer Daniel Beck, and more than a dozen other former executives and directors failed to properly manage interest rate and other risks, so the defendants must continue to face the suit. As of October 2026, the case was ongoing.⁠[39][39][40]

On the third anniversary of the failure, Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Maxine Waters, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, wrote on March 11, 2026, to Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman asking about the status of the Fed’s investigation into whether Silicon Valley Bank executives violated banking laws and regulations, and urging swift civil money penalties and industry bans. They wrote that the FDIC had taken steps as receiver to hold the executives accountable while the Federal Reserve, as primary federal regulator, had yet to act, and asked for answers by March 24.⁠[41][41][41][41]

The holding company’s claims passed to SVB Financial Trust, created through the liquidation, which agreed to litigate only a contract claim of about $1.7 billion against the FDIC. On February 23, 2026, Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the Northern District of California issued a partial summary judgment holding that the former corporate officers’ conduct could be judged under an ordinary negligence standard rather than a gross negligence standard, and that they could not rely on the business judgment rule.⁠[17][42][42]

After a 12-day bench trial, Freeman issued 206 pages of findings and an order on August 28, 2026, holding that the trust could not recover $1.71 billion from the FDIC: officers of the holding company and the bank, including the chief financial officer and global treasurer, breached their fiduciary duties by causing the bank to take on excessive interest rate and liquidity risk, removing partial interest rate hedges, and approving a $294 million dividend to the parent while the bank was in dire financial condition, and the FDIC established damages “far greater” than the trust’s claim. The court also found that the FDIC had not proved bad-faith or willful misconduct by the officers. Freeman wrote that, having chosen to run the bank through holding company officers, the holding company must live with the consequences.⁠[17][40][40][17][17][17][17][40][17]

In the fourth quarter of 2026, First Citizens unified its commercial brands: Silicon Valley Bank’s technology and healthcare banking division became First Citizens Innovation Banking, SVB Global Fund Banking became First Citizens Fund Banking, and the SVB wine division became First Citizens Premium Wine; the former svb.com site now redirects to the First Citizens Innovation Banking site.⁠[43][43][43][43][44]

First Citizens Innovation Banking: Official website after the acquisition: https://innovation.firstcitizens.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[44]