UK racing to secure deal to protect firms from Silicon Valley Bank collapse
Around the world, the effects of Silicon Valley Bank's demise are already being felt . The UK division of SVB has already stopped operating, will soon be deemed insolvent, and is no longer accepting new clients. Entrepreneurs are in a panic over paying staff and getting access to capital. In a letter submitted to UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Saturday, the heads of almost 180 tech businesses pleaded with him to take action.
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"The loss of deposits has the potential to destroy the business and set the ecosystem back 20 years," they stated in the letter viewed by Bloomberg. "Many enterprises will be forced overnight into voluntary liquidation." The UK is merely the starting point. SVB also had offices in Israel, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, India, and Sweden. Entrepreneurs are expressing concern that, in the absence of government action, the bank's bankruptcy might destroy companies all around the world. By reassuring local clients that operations have been independent and stable overnight, SPD Silicon Valley Bank Co., a joint venture of SVB in China, hoped to relax clients there.
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UK company CEOs and founders wrote to Hunt with the request that he avert the catastrophe, which they predicted would begin on Monday. Uncapped, Apian, Pockit, and Pivotal Earth are a few of the businesses listed in the letter.On Saturday morning, Hunt discussed the problem with the governor of the Bank of England, and the economic secretary to the Treasury was scheduled to host a roundtable with impacted businesses later that day, according to the Treasury.
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Underscoring the difficulty governments have in understanding the full scope of the consequences: According to two people with knowledge of the situation who asked to remain anonymous since the information is private, the UK Treasury has started approaching startups and questioning them about their cash on hand, their estimated cash burn, and their access to banking facilities at SVB and elsewhere. Treasury declined to respond to questions about the poll.
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A financial technology firm called Uncapped, which lends to other startups, announced the creation of an emergency funding programme to assist businesses in meeting payroll and other obligations as well as longer-term bridge loans to assist with working capital. The financial resources of British entrepreneurs are already stretched due to a downturn in the venture capital funding industry, according to Alexander Fitzgerald, the founder of the broadband firm Cuckoo and a former Treasury official. British startups require the Treasury to act quickly, he declared.