Silicon Valley Bank gave employees bonuses hours before collapsing

Employees of Silicon Valley Bank got their annual bonuses just hours before the California bank’s shutdown was announced Friday.

The shutdown came on the second Friday of March, historically when the company issued yearly bonuses.

Sources said the bonuses were for work done in 2022 and had already been in process before the collapse, NBC News reported.

The size of the bonuses have not been determined but Glassdoor.com states that they typically range from $12,000 for associates to $140,000 for managing directors.

As recently as 2018, SVB offered employees the highest pay of any publicly traded bank, according to Bloomberg.com. That year, employees reportedly received an average salary of $250,683.

SVB CEO Greg Becker sent a video message to employees Friday, saying he no longer makes decisions at the bank.

A spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures bank deposits, did not readily comment on the bonuses.

SVB became the second largest bank in U.S. history to collapse when it was taken over by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

After the news of the shutdown broke on Friday, numerous companies with deposits at SVB were unable to pay employees.

Roku said that SVB held roughly $487 million of the company’s cash, Axios reported.

“The Company’s deposits with SVB are largely uninsured. At this time, the company does not know to what extent the company will be able to recover its cash on deposit at SVB,” Roku said in a regulatory filing.

Just months ago, regulatory filings showed that 95% of the bank’s deposits were uninsured, reports CNBC.

Roblox, an online gaming platform, and Circle, a cryptocurrency firm, both had roughly $3 billion in deposits with SVB.

Etsy, Vox Media and Rocket Lab USA are among the other companies feeling the effects.

Venture capitalist David Sacks on Friday called on the federal government to step in, citing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin in a tweet.

“Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe. Place SVB with a Top 4 bank. Do this before Monday open [sic] or there will be contagion and the crisis will spread,” he wrote.