Police officers leave Silicon Valley Banks headquarters in Santa Clara, California on March 10, 2023.
Noah Berger AFP Getty Images
Silicon Valley Bank employees received an annual bonus there just a few hours before the regulator arrested the failed bank, according to people with knowledge of the payment.
The Santa Clara, California-based bank has paid its employees bonuses on the second Friday of March, said the people, who declined to be identified about the award. The payment was for work done in 2022 and had been processed days before the bank collapsed, the source said.
This year, the bonus day falls on the last day of SVB’s independence. The institution, in a banking turmoil sparked by panicked venture capital investors and startup founders, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) at noon on Friday.
On Friday, SVB CEO Greg Becker addressed workers in a two-minute video saying he was no longer making decisions at the 40-year-old bank, according to People.
The size of the payment could not be determined, but the SVB bonus ranges from $12,000 for an associate to $140,000 for a managing director, according to Glassdoor.com.
SVB was the highest-paid publicly traded bank in 2018, with an average employee earning $250,683 for the year, according to Bloomberg.
After the foreclosure, the FDIC offered SVB employees 45 business days, the people said. The bank had 8,528 employees as of December.
An FDIC spokesman declined to comment on the bonus.
