The pursuit of impartiality can make people do mad things. A number of journalists I know abstain from voting in order to maintain it. This has always struck me as a revealingly tribal way of viewing the world: is the only critical judgment they make about politics whether to tick a red or blue box
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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has left start-ups scrambling to find emergency loans and pay staff as founders fear being held personally liable for unpaid wages. The bank’s closure on Friday has locked in client deposits, the vast majority of which are uninsured, and starved start-ups of funds to cover basic operations. “We’ve had
The writer is a partner at Sequoia Capital Not much suggests a connection between Siena, the most majestic of Tuscany’s hill towns, and the flatlands of Santa Clara, the city in northern California which houses the Great America theme park and Levi’s stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. But there is a link and
It is fitting that Silicon Valley should be home to the first significant digital run on a bank. Thanks to tech innovation, withdrawing money means going online these days, not queueing round the block. Hence the speed with which Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by regulators last week following $42bn of withdrawals. Opportunists have
Janet Yellen said on Sunday that the US government was working closely with banking regulators to help depositors at Silicon Valley Bank, but dismissed the idea of a bailout. Speaking to CBS on Sunday, the Treasury secretary sought to assure US customers of the failed tech lender that policies were being discussed to stem the
The writer is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an adviser to Allianz and Gramercy The fate of what was a little-known bank outside the tech world until last week is now of major policy concern this weekend, and not just in the US. In a narrow sense, it demonstrates that even seemingly small banks
The UK government is trying to push through a takeover of the British arm of Silicon Valley Bank to prevent damage spreading across the technology sector, with a deep-pocketed Middle Eastern buyer having already expressed interest. The collapse of SVB has sparked crisis talks in Downing Street over the weekend, as British tech company executives
The UK chancellor will lay out his ambition to get hundreds of thousands more people into work in next week’s Budget, introducing reforms intended to move parents, the sick, disabled, and older workers back into jobs. Jeremy Hunt said his priority was to create the conditions for growth and to bear down on inflation, billing
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank has left many Chinese funds and tech start-ups in the lurch, as the collapsed institution served as a key funding bridge for groups operating between China and the US. SVB’s abrupt takeover by US regulators on Friday has also cast doubt over the fate of its joint venture in
Saudi Aramco reported record profits of $161bn in 2022 and increased its payout to shareholders as the largely state-owned oil company cashed in on a tumultuous year in energy markets. The Saudi Arabian producer on Sunday said it sold more oil than in 2021, improved refining margins and benefited from strong crude prices, which helped
The UK chancellor is preparing a dramatic intervention to provide a cash lifeline to scores of tech businesses next week as he seeks to contain the damage caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Jeremy Hunt said there was “a serious risk” to tech and life sciences companies that used SVB’s UK bank, many
Xi Jinping has kept the country’s central bank governor Yi Gang in his post and retained his finance and commerce ministers, as the Chinese president defied expectations of a large-scale overhaul of his cabinet at this year’s annual parliamentary meeting. The reappointments, which analysts said would reassure markets nervous about plans by Beijing to reform
US customers of Silicon Valley Bank which are not covered by a government-backed insurance scheme have been rushing to sell their deposits to pay salaries and other operating expenses after the lender was shuttered by regulators. SVB will reopen on Monday for insured depositors under the newly formed Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara,
In early March, 40 chief financial officers from various technology groups gathered in the Utah ski resort of Deer Valley for an annual “snow summit” hosted by Silicon Valley Bank, a crucial financial institution for start-ups. Barely a week later, on Thursday morning, several of the finance chiefs were exchanging frantic messages about whether they
The world’s largest seller of electric and hybrid cars has ruled out building its first European car factory in the UK because of Brexit. China’s BYD has set out ambitious plans to dominate the region’s electric vehicle market this decade, aiming to account for one in 10 battery cars sold by 2030, and wanting to
China has named a general who is under US sanctions as its new defence minister, creating an additional hurdle for military dialogue as the two countries fret that geopolitical tensions could boil over into conflict. Li Shangfu, an aerospace engineer with little previous international exposure, was confirmed as the top military official on Sunday. His
Rishi Sunak has tried to distance the government from the row consuming the BBC over its suspension of football presenter Gary Lineker for what it said was a breach of its political impartiality policy. The prime minister called on the broadcaster to resolve the row quickly, intensifying pressure on Tim Davie, its director-general, who apologised
More than 200 UK-based tech company executives have urged Downing Street to intervene after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which they warned poses an “existential threat to the UK tech sector”. The Bank of England moved to put the UK arm of SVB into insolvency late on Friday following the shutdown earlier in the
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the sell-off in US banks that followed have highlighted the lasting dangers of a strategy many lenders used to boost profits when interest rates were low. Over the past three years, banks became accustomed to investing customer deposits in fixed-income securities when they could not profitably lend them
The BBC is embroiled in a mounting crisis over its decision to force Gary Lineker to “step back” from hosting its highest-profile sports programme after accusing him of breaching its political impartiality policy. Lineker’s suspension from Premier League highlights show Match of the Day has triggered a walkout by other BBC staff and contributors, plunging
Circle, the operator of one of the world’s largest stablecoins, has said $3.3bn of its reserves are trapped in Silicon Valley Bank, triggering a fall in the value of its token as the crypto market reels from the failure of two US banks this week. The announcement from Circle overnight on Friday prompted the company’s