Competitive advantage. If bigTechA and bigTechB discuss merging there will come a point in the due diligence where certain employees are asked to review competitive secret sauce of the other company with the understanding that if the merger unravels for some reason they will have to take a package and stop working for their current employer. I can't imagine the mbs/loan portfolio is that proprietary though.
SVB is dead. The company has failed. There is no competitive advantage because SVB is not in competition anymore, it is dead. The former SVB employees are sticking on for 45 days (at 1.5x pay) to tie up loose ends according to the FDIC. But SVB is dead, the assets are being sold and might as well be public record at this point.
Isn't there goodwill value left over because of relationships and institutional knowledge, even after SVB is stripped of assets and after debt is accounted for? Might some larger bank retain that operation and return some value to taxpayers?
Their liabilities are greater than their assets, there is no equity value left. Someone can acquire them for $1 if they want to assume their liabilities.
Not sure how much goodwill is left, given that a big herd of depositors left on thursday. But there's probably some. If you kept continuity with a more diversified client base, that's probably enough for many customers to stay.