SVB Collapse

Jefferies CEO Says Merger Best for SVB, a 2008 Repeat Unlikely

‘A merger occurring today’ ideal, Jefferies executives say
Any impairment of deposits ‘should be fairly modest,’ they say

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says he doesn’t expect SVB Financial Group’s meltdown to be a broadly systemic problem but it will hurt Silicon Valley and the venture capital sector.He appears on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin.Source: Bloomberg

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By Daniel Taub

March 12, 2023 at 7:52 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

The best solution for resolving the failure of SVB Financial Group’s Silicon Valley Bank “would be a merger occurring today,” said Jefferies Financial Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Rich Handler, who said he doesn’t see a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis emerging from the past week’s events.

“In 2008, almost the entire financial system was over-leveraged and filled with mis-marked complex illiquid assets,” Handler and Jefferies President Brian Friedman said in a letter to clients and employees of their New York-based investment bank. “This is not the case today. Our sense of the range of institutions under scrutiny is that any issues are finite and idiosyncratic – in other words, they don’t threaten the whole system and should not lead to endless contagion, as long as we remain calm.”