Seems like Twitter CEO and the world’s second-richest person Elon Musk is ready to make a new acquisition! Nearly a year after he first announced his plans to buy social media platform Twitter in April 2022, Musk has now showed interest in taking over the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
The Twitter boss on Saturday spoke of the idea that he is open to acquiring the bank which was shut down by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation on Friday. Notably, the California-based lender is the largest US bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis.
Amid all the chaos surrounding the collapsed lender, Min-Liang Tan, co-founder and CEO of Razer (a consumer electronic company), on Saturday opined that Twitter should buy SVB and become a digital bank. His tweet didn’t go unnoticed as Musk was quick to respond, “I’m open to the idea”
Musk, Twitter and Tesla CEO, is the second richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He has a net worth of a whopping $165 billion and is just behind Luis Vuitton CEO Bernard Arnault whose net worth is $187 billion.
US regulators on Friday shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and took control of its customer deposits in the largest failure of an American bank since 2008. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which typically protects deposits up to $2,50,000, said it had taken charge of the roughly $175 billion in deposits held at the bank, the 16th largest in the US.
Just a few days before being shut down, Silicon Valley Bank earlier this week featured in the annual ranking of Forbes America’s Best Banks for the 5th straight year! It also was named on the publication’s inaugural Financial All-Stars list.
The California-based lender bagged the 20th spot on the list with $213 billion in assets and 13.8 per cent return on equity. The now collapsed bank ironically had non-performing assets as low as 0.05 per cent, according to the Forbes list. Additionally, as per the publication’s inaugural Financial All-Stars List, SVB Financial Group’s 5-year return was 79 per cent.