For 65 pence you can buy a 41.5g Kit Kat. If you could find 10 pence more than a pound you can buy 500ml of Stardrops: The Pink Stuff Miracle Cream Cleaner. Five packets of Polos come in for a quid on Amazon. Also, on Sunday, if you had acted quickly, you could have snapped up Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm for a pound, but HSBC, the 'white knight bidder' might still have got in ahead of you following all night talks with Rishi Sunak and the Bank of England (imagine what Andrew Bailey would have looked like having pulled an all-nighter? Ouch!).
We are told (and it makes some sense) that HSBC's last-minute rescue averts a crisis for Britain’s technology industry. SVB’s British business is a key banking partner for venture capital firms and start-ups and has more than 3,000 customers in the UK. Jogging with his rather attractive blonde Labrador this morning close to Downing Street (he couldn't afford the last quid of his taxi fare) Jeremy Hunt said: "Some of Britain’s leading tech companies could have been 'wiped out' by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank." As we all obsessed by Gary Lineker's rather ridiculous little grey goatie over the weekend, people in suits worked all hours to protect us from even bigger news headlines this morning, For example, we now learn that 3,200 UK tech firms which had more than £7 billion deposited at the bank would not be able to pay their bills this morning.
"Me neither," said Billy.
"Sure, but that's for an entirely different reason than the collapse of SVB," offered Wendy.
US regulators shut California-based Silicon Valley Bank on Friday afternoon. European stocks fell in early trading today, but US futures rose as investors digested regulators’ actions over the weekend. The Bank of England, which had warned it planned to put SVB UK into insolvency after the collapse of its parent, said action was taken “to stabilise SVB UK, ensuring the continuity of banking services, minimising disruption to the UK technology sector and supporting confidence in the financial system”.
Phew (mind you, that woiuld have been a nice little earner).
SVB UK will become part of HSBC’s ringfenced UK business, which has 14mn customers and 18,500 staff. The business, which traces its roots back to the Midlands Bank, is based in Birmingham. HSBC said a final calculation of the gain from the acquisition would be provided in due course and that it would be funded from its existing resources. No taxpayers' money has been affected or damaged by this incident.
We have scanned all of the other stories on the web for you this morning (Monday 13 March), but they all involve either Lineker or Tik Tok (three involve both), so think you are up-to-date for now.
