Police officers exit Silicon Valley Banks headquarters in Santa Clara, California on March 10, 2023.
Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Images
Silicon Valley Bank employees received their annual bonus on Friday just hours before regulators seized the failing bank, according to people with knowledge of the payments.
The Santa Clara, California-based bank has historically paid employee bonuses on the second Friday in March, the people, who declined to be identified, said, speaking of the awards. The payments were for work done in 2022 and were pending days before the bank’s collapse, the sources said.
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Coincidentally, this year’s bonus day fell on the last day of the SVB’s independence. The institution, in the throes of a bank run caused by panicked venture capital investors and startup founders, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) around noon on Friday.
SVB chief executive Greg Becker addressed employees on Friday in a two-minute video saying that, according to people, he was no longer making decisions at the 40-year-old bank.
The amount of the payments could not be determined, but SVB bonuses could be range from about $12,000 for employees to $140,000 for directors, according to Glassdoor.com.
SVB was the best paying listed bank in 2018, with employees earning an average of $250,683 for that year, according to Bloomberg.
After the seizure, the FDIC offered SVB employees 45 days of work, the people said. The bank had 8,528 employees in December.
A spokesman for the FDIC declined to comment on the bonuses.
