Silicon Valley Bank Paid Bonuses Just Before Feds Shut It Down

Silicon Valley Bank employees received their annual bonuses Friday, just hours before regulators seized the failing bank, according to a weekend online report by CNBC, quoting “people with knowledge of the payments.”

The payments were for work done in 2022 and had been in process days before the bank’s collapse, according to the business news outlet.

The Santa Clara-based bank has historically paid employee bonuses on the second Friday of March, the report said.

The size of the payouts was not revealed, but SVB bonuses range from about $12,000 for associates to $140,000 for managing directors, according to Glassdoor.com.

Silicon Valley Bank was the highest-paying publicly traded bank in 2018, with employees getting an average of $250,683 for that year, according to Bloomberg.

The bank reported 8,528 employees as of December.

After the bank’s closing by California regulators and its seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC reportedly offered SVB employees 45 days of employment.

The Treasury Department’s announcement Sunday to make whole the accounts of all depositors in Silicon Valley Bank provided no solutions for the bank’s employees – who are all out of jobs,  its creditors who loaned the bank money – including other financial institutions, or its vendors who are owed money.

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