Silicon Valley Bank employees received bonus hours before takeover

Silicon Valley Bank employees received their annual bonuses on Friday just hours before regulators seized the failing bank, according to people with knowledge of the payments.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based bank has historically paid employee bonuses on the second Friday in March, said the people, who declined to be identified and spoke about the rates. The payments were for work done in 2022 and had been pending days before the bank’s collapse, the sources said.

This year, the bonus day coincidentally fell on SVB’s last independence day. The institution, in the midst of a bank run sparked by panicked venture capital investors and startup founders, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) around midday on Friday.

SVB CEO Greg Becker addressed workers Friday in a two-minute video in which he said he no longer made decisions at the 40-year-old bank, according to the people.

The size of the payouts could not be determined, but SVB bonuses range from about $12,000 for associates to $140,000 for CEOs, according to Glassdoor.com.

SVB was the highest-paying publicly traded bank in 2018, with employees earning an average of $250,683 for that year, according to Bloomberg.

After the seizure, the FDIC offered SVB employees 45 days of employment, the people said. The bank had 8,528 employees as of December.

An FDIC spokesman declined to comment on the bonuses.