SVB collapse LIVE: US stock market opens higher as regional bank shares surge

Billionaire Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin has argued that the Biden administration should not have guaranteed the deposits of customers at failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature bank. 

'There's been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full,' Griffin told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday, before Citadel on Tuesday said it bought a 5.3% stake in Western Alliance Bancorporation. 

Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and FDIC announced a plan to guarantee deposits at failed SVB and Signature, insisting that the move was not a bailout for the banks' bondholders and shareholders.

SVB's new CEO Tim Mayopoulos urged clients to return their money to the bank.

In a private Zoom meeting with a select number of investors, Mayopoulos on Tuesday said having investors return their money to the bank is 'the single-most important thing you can do to ensure that Silicon Valley Bank survives.'

He added that the next step for the renamed SVB Bridge Bank is either to team up with another fiancial institution, or shut it down altogether.

'That is not the preferred course here; [the preferred] is to either allow Silicon Valley Bank to continue to operate as an independent institution with a new charter under Silicon Valley Bridge bank or to become part of another organization, or [that a] set of backers will be able to provide the capital, and funding for the business going forward,' he said, according to Tech Crunch.

Billionaire investor Charles Schwab lost a whopping $3billion from his personal fortune in just three days following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The 85-year-old jet-setting Republican donor whose granddaughter was given a job in the Trump White House has lost $2.9billion since March 8, with his net worth now down more than any other billionaire this year at just $10billion.

He is now just the world's 183rd richest man, Bloomberg reports, after being ranked 63rd only three years ago for the roughly 6 percent stake in the brokerage firm he founded in 1971.

Vivek Ramaswamy thinks that President Joe Biden is 'pandering' to drifting Democrats by intervening to help depositors at the crisis-stricken Silicon Valley Bank and said it was absolutely a 'bailout'.

The 2024 Republican presidential hopeful, who is a biotech company and investment firm founder, told DailyMail.com that the Federal Reserve is trying to 'play God.'

He also vowed if he's elected that he will fire 90 percent of the Fed's staff to downsize the federal government's involvement in the economy.

Just one member of Silicon Valley Bank's board of directors had experience in investment banking, while the others were major Democratic donors, it has been revealed.

Tom King, 63, was appointed to the board in September after previously serving as the CEO of investment banking at Barclay's. He has had 35 years of experience in investment banking.

But he is the only one on the board with experience in the financial industry, while others are a former Obama administration employee, a prolific contributor to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even a Hillary Clinton mega-donor who prayed at a Shinto shrine when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.

Big Short investor Michael Burry believes there is 'no true danger' of a full-scale financial crisis following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. 

Burry, who made a fortune by correctly predicting the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, gave the assessment as a former top regulator also said 'people need to keep their head' because most banks are fine.

Burry tweeted: 'The crisis could resolve very quickly. I am not seeing true danger here.'

The Justice Department and SEC will investigate the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and the two executives who cashed out millions in shares before it was seized. 

Ousted CEO Gregory Becker and CFO Daniel Beck both sold their shares two weeks before the bank's panicked customers made a run for their cash. 

Becker cashed out $3.57m of stock in a pre-planned, automated sell-off, while Beck ditched $575,000. 

Credit rating agency Moody's has downgraded its outlook for the entire US banking sector to negative from stable, citing 'rapid deterioration in the operating environment' after the failure of two banks in recent days.

The Moody's report on Tuesday morning came even as shares of troubled regional banks jumped after a steep selloff in the prior session, with some rising more than 50 percent as contagion fears eased after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The report cited 'the rapid and substantial decline in bank depositor and investor confidence' in recent days, which it said 'highlight risks in US banks' asset-liability management.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Silicon Valley Bank's ex-CEO Gregory Becker on Tuesday asking about his efforts to roll back bank regulations.

In the letter, she asks Becker about his efforts to roll back Dodd-Frank regulations and about the bank's lobbying efforts.

She writes: 'You have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives. 

'You lobbied for weaker rules, got what you wanted, and used this opportunity to abdicate your basic responsibilities to your clients and the public — facilitating a near-economic disaster.'

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says the central bank in the United States will take into account February's Consumer Price Index report when making decisions about whether to raise interest rates.

CPI increased 6 percent over the year through February, less than the 6.4 percent increase in January and notably lower than the peak of 9.1 percent last year.

Some economists now expect the Federal Reserve to either pause or lower interest rates to ease the pain on the banking sector, but to keep tackling interest rates even more based on the CPI report.

In an essay for DailyMail.com, former Vice President Mike Pence slammed Democrats for their policies which he said led to Silicon Valley Bank's collapse on Friday.

He writes: 'Just like in 2008, the cause of the current panic is excessive risk taking in the private sector that has been aided and abetted by government. To recap the 2008 fiasco: Congress pushed hard to expand homeownership and encouraged relaxed lending standards.

'Banks subsequently underwrote risky mortgages to subprime borrowers, which were then purchased by the government-sponsored firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and repackaged into mortgaged backed securities. When subprime borrowers began to default, the whole system melted down along with our entire economy.

'This time, the characters and setting are slightly different, but the plot remains the same. Under the Biden administration, Democrats have increased spending by over $10 trillion – more than the economies of Japan, Germany and Australia combined.

'This spending spree fueled record inflation, inevitably requiring the FED to raise interest rates.'

Silicon Valley Bank's new CEO emailed customers to tell them it's 'business as usual' despite the 'extremely challenging' past few days - as employees were left asking how their former bosses could make 'absolutely idiotic' errors of judgement.

Tim Mayopoulos was named as the new chief executive officer on Monday morning, after the government fired the existing managers including boss Greg Becker.

'Silicon Valley Bank, N.A. is open and conducting business as usual,' wrote Mayopolous, in an email to all clients sent on Monday afternoon.

The banks rebounded in premarket trading this morning with shares rising up to 50 percent after dramatic slides yesterday that sparked contagion fears after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Regional banks that suffered in yesterday's bloodbath were heading toward the green. First Republic Bank leapt as much as 51 percent in premarket action after a record 62 percent drop. PacWest climbed 40 percent and Western Alliance rose 22 percent.

The Big Four of trillion-dollar banks were all trending higher. Bank of America was ticking over 3.6 percent, Citigroup moved north of 2.5 percent, JP Morgan Chase hiked 1.9 percent and Wells Fargo made a 3.2 percent stride to the good.

Credit Suisse Group AG isn't at risk from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, CEO Ulrich KKoerner said Tuesday, after shares of the Swiss lender hit fresh lows this week.

'Our credit exposure to SVB in particular is not material,' Koerner said at the Morgan Stanley European Financials Conference.

Credit Suisse stock has lost nearly a fifth of its value in the past four days, as the failure of three US regional lenders prompted concerns about banks' vulnerability to rising interest rates.

SVB's seizure Friday, the largest US bank failure since the financial crisis, was precipitated by fleeing depositors and sent shock waves across the global financial system.

As a systemically important bank, Credit Suisse follows 'materially different standards' in terms of capital strength, funding and liquidity, Koemer said. He said the lender had CET1 capital ratio of 14.1 percent in the fourth quarter and a liquidity coverage of 144 percent that has since increased.