Silicon Valley Bank Collapse: SVB was hiring in India days before it went bust

The Silicon Valley Bank crisis engulfed fears of a global financial crisis over the weekend before the US Federal Reserve stepped in and provided relief to the depositors of the startup-focused bank. However, despite being in the eye of the storm, the company's profile on LinkedIn continues to display job openings in their India offices.

At the time of writing this story, the company's LinkedIn page has four IT job openings for a hybrid setup focused in Bengaluru. The postings have been live for about a week.

Business Today previously reported that about 800 SVB employees are already a part of the bank's Bengaluru office located in the Manayata Tech Park.

SVB Fallout

Greg Becker, chief executive of SVB sold over 12,450 shares for $ 3.57 million on February 26. Chief Financial Officer, Daniel Beck sold $0.57 million worth of stocks on the same day. Michelle Draper, the CMO, first sold $20,000 worth of shares and in a second transaction sold 809 shares for $ 0.19 million. These were early signs of the bank's collapse.

Y-Combinator, an American technology startup accelerator wrote to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the collapse of SVB will impact over a lakh of jobs and thousands of startups.

In a petition, signed by over 3,500 CEOs and founders representing over 2 lakh employees, the accelerator has urged the secretary for relief and attention to an immediate critical impact on small businesses, startups, and their employees who are depositors at the bank.

"We are asking you to save innovation in the American economy," said Garry Tan, CEO & President of Y Combinator. According to the NVCA, SVB has over 37,000 small businesses with more than $250,000 in deposits, he said. "These balances are now unavailable to them, and without further intervention, according to the FDIC website, may be inaccessible for months to years."

Yellen responded and reassured the public that the US banking system is safe and resilient but said that regulators are considering a wide range of options but a bailout isn't one of them as of now.

Read: 'Working to address SVB collapse, but not looking at bailout,' says US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen