SVB – The biggest banking collapse since 2008

Silicon Valley Bank closed its doors on Friday, triggering anxiety across the Tech World.

1. SVB Goes Bust

Silicon Valley Bank, a US bank specialising in lending to technology companies, was shut down by regulators and had its assets seized on Friday. This is the biggest bank failure in the US since the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank had been trying to raise funds to cover losses from the sale of assets affected by higher interest rates, and word of its troubles led customers to withdraw their funds, causing a cash crisis.

2. Chat-Gpt 4 The Win

OpenAI has launched GPT-4, the latest version of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot . The new model can process up to 25,000 words, respond to images, and has been trained on human feedback. It is available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers for $20 per month, and is already being used by Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

GPT-4 belongs to a category of generative artificial intelligence, which creates new content based on user prompts.

3. A Credit Suisse Crash

Credit Suisse shares plummeted a record 30% after finding “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting and its largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, saying it would not provide further support by buying more shares. Shares then soared 30% on Thursday night as it announced plans to borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($81 billion) from the Swiss National Bank to shore up its finances.

The bank has faced various scandals including tax evasion, money laundering, and the collapse of Greensill Capital, causing its share price to continuously fall.

4. Under attack

Financial lender, Latitude Finance, has had more than 300,000 customer identification documents stolen. According to a spokesperson, the unusual activity was detected on its systems over the last few days, with hackers stealing employee login details to access personal customer information before the company was able to isolate the incident.

The lender partners with major retailers including Harvey Norman and David Jones to offer customers credit cards and buy-now-pay-later options.

5. Back at the negotiating table

Ending a four month standoff, Newcrest Mining and Newmont Corp have agreed upon terms for a round of early-stage takeover talks. Newmont settled important non-disclosure and standstill agreements, with the two parties meeting for the first time since Newcrest rejected a $22.4 billion takeover offer.

The talks are expected to see the Australian miner explain why it turned down Newmont’s proposal, as well what sort of price the company and its board may be willing to accept to grant official due diligence and/or sign a deal.