The British Treasury wanted to be reassuring. HE Minister of FinanceJeremy Hunt, for his part, seems less serene. He estimated on Sunday that the bank failure California’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was endangering 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 television. news from heaven.
“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 that he spoke to the prime minister over the weekend. Rishi Sunak and the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, and that they are working “at a brisk pace to find a solution”.
He added that this plan would cover the cash needs of companies affected by the implosion of the bank, a lender to “some of our most promising and exciting businesses.”
Bailout of the Bank of London?
Little known to the general public, SVB had specialized in financing start-up companies and had become the 16th largest US bank by asset size. Its disappearance is not only the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008, but also the second largest retail bank failure in the world. USA.
The bank was no longer able to cope with massive withdrawals from its clients, mainly tech gamers, and its latest attempts to raise fresh money were unsuccessful. On Saturday, the British Treasury said that SVB’s problems were “specific” and “had no implications for other banks operating in the United Kingdom “.
As for SVB’s UK branch, 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 a bank insolvency proceedings.
The British television channel Sky News informs for its part, without giving further details, that the young Bank of London, opened two years ago, is studying the possibilities of rescuing the British subsidiary of the SVB.
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