[oceanplexian]

The "assets" are actually held-to-maturity securities (bonds) that are yielding less than the risk free rate. Who would want to buy a bond that yields 2% when you can buy treasures that yield 4%. So while they might have $210B in paper assets but there's no chance they will be unable to unload them without taking a loss, putting the bank upside down.

[ok_dad]

> Who would want to buy a bond that yields 2% when you can buy treasures that yield 4%.

Whatever bank/organization that wants to have SVB's customers, probably. If an even bigger bank comes in, one which can take on those lukewarm assets for a decade without risk, then they can immediately position themselves as the "new SVB" and get a bunch of VCs and startups as customers. I assume that they could stand to profit some from such an arrangement, but I'm not a banker, so maybe not?

[petesergeant]

> Who would want to buy a bond that yields 2% when you can buy treasures that yield 4%

The government, to protect the economy

[Me1000]

The federal government doesn't need liquidity in the same way that a bank does, why would they even need to sell at all?

[vineyardmike]

And restructuring tends not be stay “gov owned” - the government assumes ownership to stabilize the market then tries to sell off the business to another business. Often there’s some incentive to assume a massive amount of customers and assets. The gov may even take on the intermediate loss (the FCID is an insurance agency after all).

[Me1000]

Yeah, I can see why in general the government wouldn't want to hold on to assets, but bonds are kind of a special class of asset in that they do eventually mature and will naturally just be something they don't need to manage (within a relatively short time period too). If you expect that the sell off could take years to complete, some of those bonds will be halfway to maturity by the time they're sold.

If I'm the FDIC and I have the opportunity to return 100% of the funds to depositors at the cost of just holding on to a bond for a few more years than I otherwise would, that seems like a tradeoff I'd make to stabilize a lot of companies. (I'm of course biased here)