- Tim Mayopoulos, who was appointed by regulators to lead SVB, sent an email to customers on Tuesday saying the bank is “open for business.”
- Mayopoulos urged clients who moved their deposits elsewhere to “please consider retrieving some of them as part of a safe deposit diversification strategy”.
- SVB was seized by regulators on Friday after a run on the 40-year-old bank.
A view of the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, after the federal government intervened in the bank’s collapse on March 13, 2023.
Nikolas Liepins | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
SVB’s new leader told clients in a Tuesday message that the seized bank was “open for business” and ready to receive and hold client deposits, calling on venture capital firms and other tech clients to come back home.
“If you, your portfolio companies, or your company have moved funds in the past week, consider retrieving some of it as part of a safe deposit diversification strategy,” wrote Tim Mayopoulos, who has been appointed by the Federal Deposit Insurance. Corporation was appointed CEO of the bank, now called Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.
In an email to customers also posted on the SVB’s website, Mayopoulos told the bank’s customer base that “depositors have full access to their money,” adding that both new inflows and existing deposits were fully protected by the FDIC.
“The most important thing you can do to support the future of this institution is to help us rebuild our deposit base, both by leaving deposits with Silicon Valley Bridge Bank and returning those left over from the past few days Mayopoulos wrote.
More than $40 billion in deposits left SVB last week, as startups and venture capital funds fled the failing institution just after a mid-quarter report showed it had sold $21 billion worth of securities at a loss. SVB’s bankruptcy was the second-largest ever for a US bank, following the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008. Federal regulators stepped in over the weekend, guaranteeing depositors would not suffer losses as the contagion threatened to spread to other banks .
In the post, Mayopoulos specified no cap on FDIC protection, in line with federal regulators’ comments that the backstop would be structured in a way that fully protects all depositors. The FDIC is only required to insure $250,000 in deposits per customer.
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