Court Orders Wind-Up of SVB Toronto Branch, Shift to Bridge Bank

A Canadian court ordered the restructuring of Silicon Valley Bank’s Toronto branch and appointed a receiver to handle the movement of assets to a new bridge bank overseen by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

(Bloomberg) — A Canadian court ordered the restructuring of Silicon Valley Bank’s Toronto branch and appointed a receiver to handle the movement of assets to a new bridge bank overseen by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. 

The action means “an orderly transition of the Canadian branch of Silicon Valley Bank to the FDIC bridge bank,” Canadian financial superintendent Peter Routledge said in a statement. “I am satisfied that this approach, developed with officials in the United States, is in the best interest of the branch’s creditors.” 

The Canadian division of Silicon Valley Bank, which received a license to open in 2019, ended last year with C$435 million ($316 million) in secured loans, according to regulatory filings. That was a tiny part of parent company SVB Financial Group’s balance sheet, but it was twice the C$212 million in loans reported a year earlier. 

SBV had only a foreign bank-branch license in Canada, so it wasn’t eligible to take retail deposits. Documents filed with the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions indicate that almost all of the funding for the Canadian operation came from its head office and other financial institutions. 

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