HSBC to buy SVB UK for £1

 

British bank HSBC will buy the U.K. subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for £1 ($1.20).  The sale will allow SVB UK to avoid being placed into insolvency just days after SVB US went under following a bank run late last week. The Bank of England said that SVB UK would have been placed into insolvency unless it found a buyer. HSBC said that SVB UK had outstanding loans of £5.5B ($6.62B) and deposits of around £6.7B ($8.09B). SVB UK had pre-tax profits of £88M ($106.23M) in 2022. SVB UK became a separate bank subsidiary in August, requiring its own capitalization and stricter adherence to U.K. banking regulations. "The wider U.K. banking system remains safe, sound, and well capitalized," the Bank of England said in a statement on Monday U.S. regulators on Sunday said they would guarantee all of the bank's deposits beyond the $250,000 FDIC limit in an effort to prevent a broader contagion in the financial system.