[simonbarker87]

Buying for £1 is a common thing in the UK for companies in distress. In reality it’s worthless so should be £0 due to the mountain of worth and risk they need to wade through to realise the value, but UK contract law requires some kind of consideration (I think that’s the right term, my contract law for engineers module was a while ago now) for both sides otherwise it’s not a valid contract.

[shrikant]

You may be thinking of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)

[rvnx]

But all weekend SVB UK has been claiming that SVB UK has no issue and is totally safe.

So if sold for 1 GBP, it's literally a steal.

[toyg]

The assets might be worth something, but the brand is shot - kept alone, it would have suffered the same sort of bank run that killed the parent entity. HSBC is buying their books and hoping that SVB UK customers will be assuaged into not asking for the money back, now that HSBC is looking after it. Eventually I expect all SVB UK accounts to be moved to HSBC equivalents.

Banks, at the end of the day, are just that: brands built on the belief that they will survive long enough to not lose your money. Once that belief goes, once the brand is over, a bank run is automatic and the bank dies.

[neilwilson]

It's was totally safe until Monday morning when all the depositors would leave.

HSBC has a huge Sterling reserve buffer that can easily accommodate that exodus. (Essentially HSBC UK becomes the depositor of last resort in SVB UK).

Remember that the issue with SVB was that it was taking duration risk when it hadn't the deposits to match that duration. The HSBC parent company can easily provide that duration.

Cashflow issues kill profitable operations. They kill banks in double quick time.

[martinald]

As far as I understand SVB UK did not have a duration risk like the parent co.

[fredoralive]

They were only saying that on Friday, by Saturday it was "following discussions with the regulators, we intend to enter liquidation on Sunday evening".