The news came Monday (13th March) on an evening call between HSBC CEO Noel Quinn, head of HSBC UK Ian Stuart, and London tech investors.

During the call, the HSBC leaders told investors that they would commit billions of pounds to ensure SVB UK could continue business as usual. 

The £2 billion amount was confirmed by the Business Times this morning. 

The injection comes a day after HCBS acquired the UK’s arm of SVB for £1, avoiding a financial crisis that could have potentially jeopardised thousands of UK startups which rely on SVB UK to finance their businesses. 

HSBC’s acquisition of SVB UK happened at 7 a.m. Monday morning before markets opened, after round-the-clock work from The Treasury to avoid a crisis in the UK’s tech sector. To allow the acquisition to go through, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave HSBC an exemption from certain ring fencing requirements regarding what types of customers could be taken on by a UK retail bank. 

HSBC did not clarify if it would run its new division, which had roughly £5.5 billion in loans and £6.7 billion in deposits as of March 10th, as a standalone division or to keep the SVB brand according to the Business Times.

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The parent company based in the United States is now facing a class action lawsuit filed by shareholders on Monday. The Lawsuit alleges SVB Financial group CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck concealed how rising interest rates would leave the bank susceptible to a bank run. 

Despite assurance from US emergency measures that depositors would have access to their funds from the President of the United States, worries still remain about the banking sector as a whole. Banking stocks in Asia, Europe, America and the UK all slid sharply following the events on Monday. 

Photo Courtesy of HSBC.