No one in the British government’s Treasury department had expected March to be easy. Last Monday’s economics-heavy review of defence and foreign policy, and the budget that followed two days later, meant that a tough week for its mandarins had already been priced in. But none of them expected to have to sell a bank for £1 ($1.20).
That happened last Monday, when Treasury and central bank officials eventually brokered a deal for HSBC to buy the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) for a nominal fee – following the collapse of SVB’s California parent.
However, a frantic weekend spent trying to salvage the bank, on which much of Britain’s tech sector depended for cashflow, turned out to just be the “warmup act in some ways”, according to a senior Whitehall official.
The SVB deal in the UK
