SVB contagion UK arm shuts down, government scrambles and startups brace for the worst

News Summary

  • Or the Prime Minister could be serious about Britain being a science and tech super power.”The Government could decide that a minor banking crisis in the US, resulting in failed British businesses and redundant tech workers is just the free market.
  • The question then becomes, how does the liquidator or the bank trade the SVB UK assets?In the meantime, the BoE is likely to be sensitive to both their legal obligations on insured deposits but also the reality of making cash available to keep businesses going.
  • By Friday, many found they could only get part of their money out of the bank before the BoE shut down the facility.
  • In an echo of points made by US VC Mark Suster about how panic amongst VCs had boosted the SVB crisis (and in a possible reference to the effect of the Streisand Effect), Kanji tweeted: “The law firms and other VCs caused the panic imho.
  • Daily life in startups is risky enough, don’t play with your lifeline…”If you are not advising your companies to get the cash out, then you are not doing your job as a Board Member or as a Shareholder.
  • Yesterday some founders were like ‘Holy fuck, we have £900k in the bank.’ And the thing is, SVB makes it mandatory that you must primarily bank with them if you have a venture debt loan.
As of late Thursday night and Friday morning, the fallout from the shutdown of Silicon Valley Bank in the US had reached the shores of the UK and Europe. Yesterday afternoon, the Bank of England soug [+9089 chars]