A few days after its former business Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by U.S. authorities, SVB Financial Group said on March 17 that it had filed for a court-supervised restructuring under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to seek purchasers for its assets.
The decision to initiate bankruptcy procedures was made because emergency steps taken to restore trust have, as of yet, been unable to ease concerns over the spread of financial contagion.
SVB Financial Group’s troubles
The firm said earlier this week that it intended to seek strategic options for its operations, which include the holding company, SVB Capital, and SVB Securities.
The company announced that the funds and general partner entities associated with SVB Securities and SVB Capital would not be included in the chapter 11 filing. The company also stated that it intended to move forward with evaluating alternative options for the businesses and its other assets and investments.
On March 16, crypto.news reported that the parent business was considering selling its assets while filing for bankruptcy protection.
In a March 17 report, the business said it had around $2.2 billion in liquid assets. At the end of the previous year, it had a total asset value of 209 billion dollars.
SVB’s situation
With the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank a week ago, the value of financial equities has decreased by many billions of dollars, and the level of credit stress experienced by Wall Street’s most important financial institutions has increased.
According to Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Investment Management, “it is hard to tell whether there are further shoes to drop, but I believe a significant percentage of the unfavorable news is out there.”
Silicon Valley Bank, whose saga has caused a decline in NFT sales and a drop in cryptocurrencies, was put out of business by regulators in California on March.18, and the federal deposit insurance corporation (FDIC) was appointed receiver.
Because a spike in rates eroded value, SVB was obliged to sell a portfolio of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to Goldman Sachs for a loss of $1.8 billion. The portfolio consisted of mortgage-backed securities and treasuries.
Concerned customers withdrew deposits, which resulted in $42 billion being removed from the company’s accounts in a single day, even though the company had sought to raise $2.25 billion in common equity and preferred convertible shares.
