Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Fears of financial crisis after bank used by US tech sector fails

US regulators rushed to seize the assets of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday after a run on the bank, the largest failure of a financial institution since the height of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

Silicon Valley, the country's 16th largest bank, failed after depositors - mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies - hurried to withdraw their money this week as anxiety over the bank’s situation spread.

The bank could no longer cope with the massive withdrawals of its customers and its last attempts to raise new money did not succeed.

US authorities therefore officially took possession of the bank and entrusted its management to the U.S. agency responsible for guaranteeing deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Little known to the general public, SVB had specialised in financing start-ups and had become one of the largest banks in the US by asset size: at the end of 2022, it had $209 billion (€196 billion) in assets and about $175.4 billion (€164.5 billion) in deposits.

Its demise represents 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.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called several financial sector regulators together on Friday to discuss the situation, reminding them that she had "full confidence" in their ability to take appropriate action and that the banking sector remained "resilient".

Outside the bank's Santa Clara headquarters in California on Friday, a few nervous customers wondered how they could access their funds, some trying to guess what was going on through the closed glass doors.

On the front, an FDIC piece of paper said they could, starting Monday,