You decide - SVB Financial collapse - who is to blame?

١٢ مارس ٢٠٢٣

A lot of talk on who is to blame for the SVB Financial collapse – this is the first big casualty of rapid rate hikes and tighter policy, but who is to blame and what are the next steps?

-SVBs management – they invested short-term deposits in longer term fixed income assets – where a large % of its 120b securities portfolio lacked any kind of interest rate hedge (payers swaps were clearly needed)

-SVBs management – In the past 8 months SVB had no risk manager - fortune.com/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-chief-risk-officer/ - no one knows how they efficiently managed risk

-SVBs management – the accounts showed they held 91b of its 120b securities in its HTM (assets Held to Maturity) book – these are assets they intend to hold until maturity but the accounting rules detail, that they don’t need to mark-to-market the moves in the underlying and report the ballooning losses – which again were not hedged.

-SVB deposit mix - 93%+ were above the FDIC insurance limit – this makes depositors v sensitive to any capital concerns at the bank

-SVB deposit mix - VCs had a rapid cash burn, as projects they back are typically driven by changes in interest rates (think Net Present value and Internal rates of return) – depositors took cash off SVB’s balance sheet to fund operations – SVB subsequently had to sell assets as their liabilities fell – we then see realised losses from buying securities at much higher prices.

-Short sellers/investor base – shorts had an eye on unrealised losses from the worsening asset quality for weeks – the selling accelerated when the CEO/CFO/CMO disclosed they’d sold a chunk of stock on 27 March – it was over when the SVB took a 1.8b hit on its AFS securities available for sale on Wednesday – management sold 21b of its 28b book and announced a 2.25b in equity/debt raising - investors knew with conviction that depositors were fleeing – who supports a raising when liabilities are falling – no one sensible, raising pulled

-The Fed - failing to know such a shift in rates would impact banks asset quality when its primary function is financial stability.

-Regulation - Basel 3 - banks being forced to buy govt paper against deposits - v low risk weighting (perhaps required a hedge

Hard to pinpoint this on one aspect IMO - I think there is a perfect storm going on – a lack of hedging of interest rate risk was clearly a dominant factor behind this. Top down this is a function of rapidly tightening monetary policy and the impact this had on both the asset quality and liability side of the balance sheet – we should recall SVBs model is not the same as others in the banking space, so its hard to say this is systemic – still we wait for the outcome on next steps on how deposits over 250k will be dealt with – we’re hearing they may get 50% back initially but a buyer would be the best solution

The issue for regional/smaller banks comes if is we see some sort of haircut on the deposits claim over 250k – that could see a loss of confidence in holding deposits with other smaller banks names – we shall hear more soon, but broad contagion through the financial system seems unlikely, but it is a possibility given nearly 1/3 deposits in the banking system are uninsured – any bank with a large asset base and low equity are in the spotlight

As said Friday this could be a nothing burger or have real impactions on economics - the big issue happens this week if we see no clarity on how depositors are dealt (seems unlikely) with and we get a hot CPI print