Silicon Valley Bank paid bonuses to employees hours before closing, government seizure

Silicon Valley Bank employees received their annual bonuses just hours before the California bank was announced to close on Friday.

The shutdown occurred on the second Friday in March, historically when the company issued annual bonds.

The sources said the bonuses were for work done in 2022 and had it was already in the works before the collapseNBC News reported.

The size of the bonds has not been determined but Glassdoor.com states that they typically range from $12,000 for associates to $140,000 for CEOs.

As recently as 2018, SVB offered employees the highest salary of any publicly traded bank, according to Bloomberg.com. That year, employees reportedly received an average salary of $250,683.

SVB CEO Greg Becker sent a video message to employees on Friday, saying he no longer makes decisions at the bank.

A spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures bank deposits, had no comment on the bonds.

SVB became the second largest bank in US history to collapse when it was taken over by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

After the news of the lockdown broke on Friday, numerous companies with deposits at SVB were unable to pay employees.

Roku said that SVB held up to about $487 million of company cashreported Axios.

“The Company’s deposits with SVB are largely uninsured. At this time, the company does not know to what extent it will be able to recover its cash deposited in SVB,” Roku said in a regulatory filing.

Just a few months ago, regulatory filings showed that 95% of the bank’s deposits were not insured, reports CNBC.

Roblox, an online gaming platform, and Circle, a cryptocurrency firm, had approximately $3 billion in deposits with SVB.

Etsy, Vox Media and Rocket Lab USA are among the other companies feeling the effects.

Venture capitalist David Sacks called on the federal government to intervene on Friday, citing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin in a tweet.

Where is Powell? Where is Yelen? Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe. Place SVB with a Top 4 bank. Do this before Open Monday (sic) or there will be contagion and the crisis will spread”, he wrote.