How could my accountant have known the risks? I don't think there was any public information about SVB's poorly-timed MBS purchases, the main cause of this incident.
I don't think their MBS positions were public until last week. But say we knew earlier, perhaps soon after they purchased the MBSs - wouldn't the result have been similar, just the bank run would have been shifted up a bit?
I.e. having a CFO who's on top of things might mean I'm first in line to get out once there are public red flags, but not everyone can exit an insolvent bank, so the macro result seems similar.
> It’s true that investors had been aware at the latest since its 10-Q filing on Nov. 7 that it had sustained unrealized losses among its held-to-maturity (HTM) portfolio large enough to wipe out its entire $15.8 billion in shareholder equity. While this would theoretically render it insolvent were they to materialize in full, SVB Financial was dismissive of the risks.
I stand corrected, though the point remains that if everyone tried to exit once that news came out on Nov 7, we still would have had a bank failure with roughly the same shortfall.
> though the point remains that if everyone tried to exit once that news came out on Nov 7, we still would have had a bank failure with roughly the same shortfall.
True, we’d need to look at previous filings to understand when it could have first been worked out
VCs should have kept a closer eye on where their cash was, but perhaps they were too enamoured with the benefits they were getting from SVB
https://archive.ph/XaKkt