The market cap of SVB on Friday was $6 B
The amount of uninsured deposits was $150 B
The value of all the stock is 4% of the amount of uninsured deposits
The amount of uninsured deposits was $150 B
The value of all the stock is 4% of the amount of uninsured deposits
Second, just so we’re clear is your point that the holders of that $6B-$15B of useless paper won’t care because it’s less than $150B? At the end of the day, you don’t care what percent of the bag you’re holding, just that you’re holding it.
IE the equity isn't enough to leverage political capital. The deposits are.
No, they’re not. But until just now depositors in any other bank assumed the risk for any deposit in excess of $250K… and if these depositors weren’t morally different than the depositors that would absolutely have lost their wealth in excess of $250K when their chosen bank did a stupid thing, then they’d have paid the piper just like you and I would have.
These special depositors are getting special treatment and aren’t suffering what countless non-special depositors have suffered… the rules are changing because of who took the risk, that’s the very definition of moral hazard at work.
If every depositor walks in first thing Monday morning and withdraws their bad bet in their (apparently single) chosen bank’s management, the customers of all other banks are now on the hook for 145B… which ultimately means everyone on the planet can expect to pay more for their haircuts.
tl;dr - GP doesn’t have a clue what they are saying.
Let’s just sit back and see how this all plays out.
Everyone seems to be operating under the idea that while their liquidity came into question the underlying assets were and are strong-- if that were true they would have found a private sector solution early in the weekend. Waiting until 6pm on Sunday and a second regional bank collapsing to announce "oops, all bailouts!" seems like an open admission we're in the early stages of another banking crises.
Problem is they're just not even a good investment compared to brand new fed bonds / bills of short / long (might have that backwards) due to the now MUCH HIGHER interest rates. They locked in at historically low rates, and had a bank run on their free reserves.
I see some correlation between SV remote working and COVID, but don't understand how mortgage backed securities play into this. Are you suggesting higher inflation on the way, lower property values, higher rates, and that it was intentional?
One does not follow the other. The triggering problem here were unmatched maturities of assets and liabilities, i.e. liquidity crunch. They have created that liquidity by selling some assets at a loss and tried to recoup that loss from investors.
But that was not the problem. The problem was now-imminent bank run, potentially requiring up to ${total-deposits } liquidity injections and unclear future then. Once VCs told their portfolio companies to pull out svb was effectively toast.
Once the situation evolved from stage 2 to stage 3, the liquidity hole expanded from ${gap-in-maturities} to roughly ${total-deposits} and that is only to contain immediate issue, fixing books would have possibly required additional capital.
You are probably right, a bigger bank with liquidity could have saved SVB at stage 2. However, the situation evolved from stage 2 to stage 3 too quick for any meaningful deal to take place while still in stage 2.
As I see it, market cap/valuation _should_ resemble the price you'd need to pay to buy a company, but it often is not. E.g. a company has marketcap of 10B, but has 30B in liquid cash on hand. It's clear it cannot be bought for 10B. Or the other way around, the company has 30B in liabilities -- the company should pay you 20B to be bought.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/enterprisevalue.asp