Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 156 posts

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#81

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

joosters wrote: post #51
mytailorisrich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the BoE took them over and HSBC bought them for £1 you can be sure that those numbers do not reflect the current situation.

Oddly, it had been reported that the bidding process for the bank was 'competitive' and that there were several interested parties. I can't see how that could have been true if the final price was a token £1 ?

Usually the "buyer" is being paid to take it off the regulator's hands, so the actual price is negative. The token (positive) amount is to make it easier to deal with in a legal sense.

Thus the bids are for the lowest subsidy instead of the highest price.

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#84

Post by kmlx »

kdkwsndne wrote: post #71
nprateem wrote: post #62

Thank god we've got a PM who's a grown up again.

How was he involved? How did he help this situation? The US also did it over the weekend. Kinda had to be done.

> HSBC on Monday averted a crisis in Britain’s tech sector by rescuing Silicon Valley Bank’s UK arm, a dramatic fire sale concluded after all-night talks led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Bank of England.

> A sale of SVB UK, which has 3,300 UK clients, including start-ups, venture-backed companies and funds, was the preferred choice of chancellor Jeremy Hunt, avoiding a big government intervention to protect depositors.

source: https://www.ft.com/content/216b193d-62b3-4e5e-8f67-e8eb3d96e...

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#85

Post by schrodinger »

Teandw wrote: post #74
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

banks are not 'normal' companies. Their Liabilities and assets outmatch their 'profit' by 100x. They could be making a handy profit yesterday and be bancrupt today because the market has moved. Normal companies can't go bancrupt in one day

I'm not sure you understand what's happening here or the basics of business and liquidation. "Normal companies can't go bankrupt in one day" - They didn't go bankrupt. They went into liquidation. Massively different thing. You can have a company with billions of quid saved up in the bank that goes into liquidation. Liquidation is quite common and happens daily in the UK to 'normal' companies. Companies that were prof…

Off topic, but did the slang quid come from liquid as in assets?

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#87

Post by Teandw »

schrodinger wrote: post #85
Teandw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you understand what's happening here or the basics of business and liquidation. "Normal companies can't go bankrupt in one day" - They didn't go bankrupt. They went into liquidation. Massively different thing. You can have a company with billions of quid saved up in the bank that goes into liquidation. Liquidation is quite common and happens daily in the UK to 'normal' companies. Companies that were prof…

Off topic, but did the slang quid come from liquid as in assets?

Never thought about that. According to Mr Google; believed to come from the Latin phrase “quid pro quo,” which translates into "something for something," or an equal exchange for goods or services.

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#88

Post by HWR_14 »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #33
collectedparts wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's said that no bank (even the best-managed) can withstand a fullscale bank run. So to the extent that the US side of things created a crisis of confidence, that might have been enough to topple SVB UK, even if all of its fundamentals were OK.

> It's said that no bank (even the best-managed) can withstand a fullscale bank run I keep reading this but this should not be true Any bank will hit liquidity issues on a full-on bank run, as not 100% of a banks assets will be marketable, but central banks will provide emergency liquidity in these situations But banks should not hit insolvency issues like SVB did

The line is a little blurry. You can be underwater in mark-to-market terms on a bond portfolio, but be fine if you guess the timeline for redemption and can hold them to maturity. Banks estimate what percentage of their assets will be held to maturity. So needing extra liquidity causes insolvency.

Re: HSBC to Buy UK Arm of Silicon Valley Bank

#89

Post by kzrdude »

nprateem wrote: post #83
kdkwsndne wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was he involved? How did he help this situation? The US also did it over the weekend. Kinda had to be done.

Sunak was apparently very hands on according to the FT.

He has a finance background
Post reply on HN