Silicon Valley Bank biggest US lender to fail since 2008 financial crisis – a finance expert explains the impact
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William Chittenden, Texas State University
(THE CONVERSATION) Silicon Valley Bank, which catered to the tech industry for three decades, collapsed on March 10, 2023, after the Santa Clara, California-based lender suffered from an old-fashioned bank run. State regulators seized the bank and made the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation its receiver.
SVB, as it’s known, was the biggest U.S. lender to fail since the 2008 global financial crisis – and the second-biggest ever.
We asked William Chittenden, associate professor of finance at Texas State University, to explain what happened and whether Americans should be worried about the safety of their financial system.
Why did Silicon Valley Bank collapse so suddenly?
The short answer is that SVB did not have enough cash to pay depositors so the regulators closed the bank.
The longer answer begins during in the pandemic,...