A former prime minister of Britain, Harold Wilson, is famous for remarking that a week is a long time in politics. But in the world of finance, it seems everything can change in just two days.
Only 48 hours elapsed between a statement from US-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 8 that it was seeking to raise US$2.5 billion (£2 billion) to repair a hole in its balance sheet, and the announcement by US regulator the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that the bank had collapsed.
At its peak in 2021, SVB was worth US$44 billion and managed over $200 billion in assets. America’s 16th largest deposit-taking institution just a week ago, it has now become the second biggest banking failure in US history. Only the collapse of Washington Mutual during the 2008 global financial crisis was larger.
