SVB’s new CEO urges customers to “help us rebuild our deposit base”
- Tim Mayopoulos, who was appointed by regulators to run SVB, sent an email to customers on Tuesday telling them the bank is “open for business”.
- Mayopoulos urged customers who moved their deposits elsewhere to “consider moving some of them back as part of a safe deposit diversification strategy.”
- SVB was seized by the supervisory authorities on Friday after a raid on the 40-year-old bank.
A view of Silicon Valley Bank’s headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, after the federal government intervened in the bank’s collapse, on March 13, 2023.
Nikolas Liepin | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
SVB’s new chief told clients in a Tuesday message that the seized bank was “open for business” and ready to receive and hold customer deposits, a call to venture capital firms and other technology customers to come home.
“If you, your portfolio companies or your firm moved funds in the past week, you may want to consider moving some of them back as part of a safe deposit diversification strategy,” wrote Tim Mayopoulos, who was named by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as executive director. of the bank, now called Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.
In an email to customers also posted on 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 transferring back deposits in recent days,” Mayopoulos wrote.
More than $40 billion in deposits left SVB last week, as startups and venture funds fled the failing institution soon after a mid-quarter report showed it had sold $21 billion worth of securities at a loss. SVB’s failure was the second largest ever for a US bank, behind the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008. Federal regulators intervened over the weekend, guaranteeing depositors would not suffer losses as the contagion threatened to spread to other banks.
In the post, Mayopoulos did not specify a limit for FDIC protection, in line with federal regulators’ comments that the backstop would be structured in a “manner that fully protects all depositors.” The FDIC is only mandated to insure $250,000 in deposits per customer.
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