The tech landscape gave a collective shudder last month as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was taken in hand by US regulators. America’s 16th largest bank had tried to plug a $2.5 billion gap in its books with a capital raise, but when news spread that the institution was looking for cash it quickly ran dry of another precious commodity – confidence.
SVB’s share price plummeted by 60 per cent while customers and investors came down with a severe case of the jitters. The result of all this? Account holders pulled funds, and two days after it announced the deficit, SVB became a former bank.
