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Over the past week, an observation by Matt Klein, a financial journalist, has gotten passed around quite a bit. "This was more a case of a 'bank-run by idiots' rather than a 'bank run by idiots'," he wrote, referring to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.But why choose? Everyone involved in this looks terrible. Regulators did nothing, even though Silicon Valley Bank's woes had been widely noticed. Bank managers failed at the basic work of hedging against the risk of interest rates rising. Midsize banks, including Silicon…

In the hours after some of Silicon Valley Bank's biggest customers started pulling out their money, a WhatsApp group of startup founders who are immigrants of colour ballooned to more than 1,000 members.Questions flowed as the bank's financial status worsened. Some desperately sought advice: Could they open an account at a larger bank without a Social Security Number? Others questioned whether they had to physically be at a bank to open an account, because they're visiting parents overseas.One clear theme emerged: a deep…

British banks are seeing a pick-up in enquiries to switch cash between institutions after the collapse of U.S. tech lender Silicon Valley Bank, as contagion fears prompt some depositors to try to figure out the safest harbours for their funds.One of the country's biggest lenders, Barclays, told Reuters it had seen an increase in enquiries to switch or open business accounts in the past few days. Virgin Money , Britain's sixth largest bank, said in a statement it had also seen "net business deposit inflows in recent…

For years Silicon Valley Bank was a lender of choice for climate technology startups keen to tap specialised support for early-stage companies. Post its collapse, they may face higher finance costs wherever they next choose to bank.The meltdown of the 40-year-old lender triggered days of stressful phone calls for many types of technology firms as they lined up contingency plans for funds, although some calm returned after U.S. authorities stepped in to insure their deposits.For businesses with an environmental mission,…

SVB Financial Group said on Friday it filed for a court-supervised reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to seek buyers for its assets, days after its former unit Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by U.S. regulators.The move to seek bankruptcy protection comes after the company said on March 13 it was planning to explore strategic alternatives for its businesses.Shares of big U.S. banks fell more than 1.5% in premarket trading. Regional banks including PacWest Bancorp and First Republic Bank were down…

Welcome to Week in Review, folks, TechCrunch’s regular recap of the week in tech. GPT-4, OpenAI’s text- and image-understanding AI, might’ve dominated the headlines over the past few days. But fresh drama around Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse emerged as well. We cover all that and more in this edition, so grab a coffee and settle in. Quick note, TechCrunch Early Stage 2023 is fast approaching. It’ll be in Boston on April 20 and will feature three concurrent tracks of founder-forward workshops, case studies and deep…

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year over year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours…

For much of the early part of 2023, the economy seemed to be humming along.Then the music stopped. In a span of less than two weeks, the financial world has turned on its head, leaving investors to contemplate whether the economic expansion is nearing its end. What began as a plight specific to one cryptocurrency-focused bank rapidly morphed into a crisis with economic, political and international repercussions. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed just days after the shutdown of the crypto lender…

As a serial entrepreneur who has famously endured some ups and downs, Parker Conrad thought he’d seen it all. Still, he never imagined that there would be a run on Silicon Valley Bank that would upend Rippling, his six-year-old workforce management company, a run so severe that Rippling would liquidate $130 million in money market funds that its customers needed for their payrolls. He also didn’t imagine that in the span of 12 hours, Rippling would be able to secure $500 million in fresh funding to protect his…

When Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's highest-profile venture capital firms, wanted to build a bridge between two of its office buildings around 2005, it decided to take out a loan. It turned to Silicon Valley Bank, just 43 feet away on Sand Hill Road in the heart of the venture industry in Menlo Park, California.To make the loan work for Kleiner's project, which cost more than $500,000, SVB agreed to lend the money against the value of the fees that the venture firm was set to earn from its funds, four people…