In client call, SVB’s new CEO urges clients to bring funds back to the bank

Published

2 years ago

March 15, 2023

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Three days into his tenure as Silicon Valley Bank‘s government-appointed CEO, Tim Mayopoulos has a message for his high-powered venture capital and startup clients: Bring your money back.

That was consistent throughout Mayopoulos’ responses as he fielded over 400 questions from concerned clients on a 30-minute Zoom call Wednesday.

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“There is no safer place in the U.S. banking system to put your deposits,” Mayopoulos said on the call, which CNBC attended and was first to report. He urged clients to return their funds to the bank and to promptly alert their relationship teams of any issues with inbound or outbound wire transfers, a point of concern for many corporate executives who were unable to pull their deposits from the bank last week.

Mayopoulos was joined by SVB operating chief Phil Cox, the only remaining executive from the core C-suite team. SVB’s former CEO and CFO are no longer employed by the bank, Mayopoulos said on the call.

While Mayopoulos is making his pleas to current and former clients, it’s not clear how long he will stay in his current job as the bank is currently controlled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Mayopoulos said he doesn’t know what SVB’s “exact end state” would look like, and he listed three possibilities: recapitalization, sale, or liquidation.

A recapitalization would allow SVB to continue to exist as a standalone entity. But that possibility depends on another financial institution or group of investors stepping up.

“I recognize I’m new on the scene,” Mayopoulos said in direct response to concerns from venture capital firms. “You’ve been patient with us as we’ve gone through some of those operational difficulties. All I would ask is give us a chance to win back your trust and confidence.”

Mayopoulos’ pitch was tailored towards the venture investors that have taken to social media in droves to express shock and dismay at the collapse of a storied Silicon Valley institution. On the call, Mayopoulos repeatedly referred to the “innovation economy,” and to a startup ecosystem in which “Silicon Valley has played an important part.”

Customer feedback will be critical in determining the future of the bank, Mayopoulos said on the call. Input “from clients and from the venture capital and entrepreneurial community” would shape the timetable for SVB’s ultimate emergence from government control.

“One of the things I want to convey to you is that you have some agency in this that you actually get to vote, at least to send clear signals about what you want the outcome of this process to be,” the CEO said in his prepared remarks. “If our clients choose to take their deposits and keep them in other institutions, that clearly limits the range of options that we have in terms of the ultimate outcome.”

SVB’s longstanding relationship with Silicon Valley’s most elite venture firms is mutually beneficial and symbiotic.

From its founding at a poker table until the nearly fatal bank run last week, SVB was focused on taking risks in a market that most traditional banks shunned. SVB found a niche in venture debt, funding companies that needed cash infusions, especially between funding rounds.

In exchange for future consideration, often equity or warrants in a company, SVB became a mammoth player in the venture debt space, extending from software and internet into life sciences and robotics.

In its over 40 of business, SVB grew along with its depositors, building out a lucrative mortgage business and a suite of private-banking products that allowed it to retain and charm the founders whose fortunes the bank helped create.

From legacy enterprises like Cisco to more modern tech companies such as DocuSign and Roku, SVB has focused on providing financing and banking services at every stage of growth.

“There are other places that do venture debt, but Silicon Valley Bank was the 1,000-pound gorilla in the room,” said Ami Kassar, CEO of the business lending consultant Multifunding.

Exclusivity contracts, meaning an ironclad promise that a company would keep all its money at SVB, were a key facet of those funding deals. When SVB failed, it roiled startups that had traded banking flexibility for liquidity. Some fled the bank, violating their covenants to keep their lights on and their payroll checks rolling.

When asked about potential exclusivity violations, Mayopoulos indicated that he understood emergency actions taken by startups.

“Given the change in circumstances and what the FDIC has done around insurance coverage, we’d very much like to work with our clients to have those deposits come back to us,” the CEO said on the call.

Clients who return wouldn’t have to worry about any fallout from breach of their covenants, Mayopoulos suggested. He didn’t say what would happen to ex-customers who did the same.

— CNBC’s Cat Clifford contributed to this report.

Technology

Microsoft contributes $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund

Published

1 hour ago

January 9, 2025

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Microsoft contributes million to Trump's inauguration fund

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an American Technology Council roundtable at the White House in Washington on June 19, 2017.

Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.

The software maker is now more closely aligned with its highly valued peers in the technology industry. Google said earlier on Thursday that it’s donating $1 million to the Trump fund, and Meta offered the same amount in December. Amazon was reportedly looking to make a similar contribution.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that he would contribute $1 million individually, and Axios reported last week that Apple CEO Tim Cook will do the same.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s richest person, has been advising Trump as he prepares to return to the White House following the inauguration later this month.

Microsoft also contributed $500,000 to the first inauguration fund for Trump’s first term and gave the same amount to President Joe Biden’s fund, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has met with Trump on multiple occasions, including over negotiations surrounding a possible acquisition of TikTok in the U.S. in 2020. Nadella also joined a Trump roundtable of technology executives from around the country in 2017.

Microsoft is hoping that under Trump, the U.S. will push artificial intelligence policy in a favorable direction.

“The United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post last week.

WATCH: Microsoft to end 2024 with capital expenditures of at least $53 billion

Technology

Ubisoft appoints advisors to explore strategic options after report on potential buyout

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2 hours ago

January 9, 2025

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Ubisoft appoints advisors to explore strategic options after report on potential buyout

Artwork for Ubisoft’s upcoming “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” game.

John Keeble | Getty Images

French video game publisher Ubisoft said Thursday it’s appointing advisors to review and pursue strategic options after a report last year suggested that its majority backers were considering a buyout.

Ubisoft said in a strategic update that “leading advisors” had been hired to explore “transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.”

“This process will be overseen by the independent members of the Board of Directors. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes,” the company said in a statement late Thursday.

In October, Bloomberg News reported that the Guillemot family who founded Ubisoft nearly four decades ago, and Chinese tech giant Tencent were considering a potential takeover of the firm. Shares of Ubisoft skyrocketed more than 30% on the report at the time.

“We are convinced that there are several potential paths to generate value from Ubisoft’s assets and franchises,” Yves Guillemot, co-founder and CEO, said Thursday, addressing the firm’s strategic plan.

The Bloomberg report followed a decision by Ubisoft to delay the release of the latest title in its popular “Assassins Creed” video game series, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” by three months, to February 2025.

On Thursday, Ubisoft postponed the launch of “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” again, pushing it back to March 20.

Shares of Ubisoft have declined 45% in the past 12 months amid woes surrounding its pipeline of blockbuster title launches, as well as doubts over the company’s strategic direction.

Last year, activist investor AJ Investments called on Ubisoft to sell itself to private equity or Tencent. At the time, the investment firm said it had gained the support of 10% of Ubisoft’s shareholder base for its campaign.

The game maker had also garnered criticisms for plans to include a paid “Season Pass” for its new Assassin’s Creed game, which would have provided gamers access to a bonus quest and additional downloadable content at launch.

After gamers slammed the decision as adopting a “pay-to-play” model, Ubisoft decided to shelve plans for the paid feature.

Ubisoft is under pressure to prove it can turn things around. On Thursday, the company doubled down on a commitment to cut costs, saying it now expects to reach more than 200 million euros ($206 million) of cost reductions by full-year 2025 to 2026 compared to 2022 to 2023 on an annualized basis.

Technology

Billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty bids for TikTok ahead of Supreme Court arguments

Published

3 hours ago

January 9, 2025

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Billionaire Frank McCourt's Project Liberty bids for TikTok ahead of Supreme Court arguments

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Just 10 days before the U.S. ban on TikTok goes into effect, businessman Frank McCourt’s internet advocacy nonprofit Project Liberty announced Thursday it has submitted a proposal to buy the social media site from Chinese technology company ByteDance.

Project Liberty and its partners, known as “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” would restructure the app to exist on an American-owned platform and prioritize users’ digital safety, the project said in a statement.

“We’ve put forward a proposal to ByteDance to realize Project Liberty’s vision for a reimagined TikTok – one built on an American-made tech stack that puts people first,” McCourt, Project Liberty’s founder, said in the statement. “By keeping the platform alive without relying on the current TikTok algorithm and avoiding a ban, millions of Americans can continue to enjoy the platform.”

A Project Liberty spokesperson said the nonprofit was not disclosing the financial terms of the offer but confirmed that ByteDance has received the proposal.

CNBC has reached out to TikTok for comment.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the ban, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden last April, on Friday. ByteDance has repeatedly refused to sell TikTok and appealed the legislation on First Amendment grounds.

The case has worked its way through the judicial system. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the law on Dec. 6, writing that the government’s national security justifications for the ban were sufficiently compelling.

In a Dec. 9 court filing, TikTok said that the ban would cost U.S. small businesses and social media creators $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month, and that more than 7 million U.S. users do business on TikTok.

The ban, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, prohibits the distribution and maintenance of the app while it is under Chinese ownership.

The People’s Bid for TikTok aims to migrate TikTok to an open-source platform that allows users more control of their data, as part of Project Liberty’s mission to build a more user-empowered internet.

The initiative partners with investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Its backers include digital safety advocates, investor Kevin O’Leary and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.