Silicon Valley Bank Sold to First Citizens in Government-Backed Deal (2024)

First Citizens BancShares, a family-run bank in North Carolina that traces its history to the late 1800s, said on Sunday that it would acquire Silicon Valley Bank, the California lender founded in the 1980s at the center of the technology industry, whose rapid growth and sudden collapse this month sent shock waves across the financial sector.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized control of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, after a run on deposits left it insolvent, making it the country’s largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. The F.D.I.C. had since been looking for a buyer for the bank, which was the country’s 16th largest when it collapsed.

The deal for the bank, renamed Silicon Valley Bridge Bank after the F.D.I.C. seized it, included the purchase of about $72 billion in loans, at a discount of $16.5 billion, and the transfer of all the bank’s deposits, worth $56 billion. Roughly $90 billion in Silicon Valley Bank’s securities and other assets were not included in the sale, and remained in the F.D.I.C.’s control.

The discount applied to the loans could help set a benchmark for other banks seeking investment, said Mark Jeffrey Flannery, a professor of finance at the University of Florida. “Now they have an idea,” he said. “Yes, it’s bad, but it’s not a complete train wreck. It’s just very bad.”

Silicon Valley Bank had roughly $175 billion in deposits before its collapse, an illustration of how extensive the withdrawals were before regulators seized it. A test for First Citizens is whether it can maintain relationships with the tech-heavy client base that Silicon Valley Bank cultivated.

“Perhaps the Silicon Valley V.C. dudes feel they’re too cool for a North Carolina bank,” wrote analysts at Autonomous Research, who said they had been fielding questions from investors about the logic of the deal.