By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Silicon Valley Bank’s former parent may pursue a lawsuit to recover $1.93 billion of deposits that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp seized following the bank’s March 2023 collapse, a federal judge ruled.
In a decision on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California said the former parent, now known as SVB Financial Trust, adequately alleged that the FDIC in its corporate capacity maintained control over the deposits, though the allegations were “vanishingly thin.”
The agency had argued that the deposits were controlled by the FDIC in its capacity as Silicon Valley Bank’s receiver, a different legal entity that the former parent is also suing.
Freeman also said the former parent can try to show it properly relied on FDIC assurances that deposits would remain safe, inducing it to leave them alone. She dismissed a due process claim.
Lawyers for the FDIC and the former parent did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed after rising interest rates caused big losses in its portfolio of long-term government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
Its problems sparked a bank run, in part because an unusually large percentage of deposits was uninsured, and disrupted many technology startups whose deposits it held.
The bank had about $209 billion of assets before it failed, in one of the largest collapses in U.S. banking history.
Much of its business was transferred to First Citizens BancShares, a North Carolina lender.
Freeman ruled six weeks after the FDIC sued 17 former Silicon Valley Bank executives and directors, including onetime Chief Executive Gregory Becker, to recover billions of dollars for alleged gross negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty.
“SVB represents a case of egregious mismanagement of interest-rate and liquidity risks,” the FDIC said last month.
The case is SVB Financial Trust v FDIC, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-06543.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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