HSBC UK acquires Silicon Valley Bank UK for £1, saving hundreds of innovative UK companies
HSBC UK has announced its acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank UK for a nominal amount of £1. The transaction followed a weekend of intense negotiations among the U.K. government, regulators, and various potential buyers after the U.K. subsidiary of the troubled U.S. entity entered insolvency procedures on Friday.
Related app: UK Breaking News
This acquisition will provide significant relief to the U.K. technology sector, which was particularly vulnerable to the collapse of both SVB and its U.K. arm. The rapid completion of the deal will be perceived as a sign of the government's endorsement of the technology industry and its trust in the financial system as a whole.
According to a statement released by HSBC, the transaction has been completed immediately, and the acquisition will be financed using existing resources. The bank further stated:
‘As at 10 March 2023, SVB UK had loans of around £5.5 billion and deposits of around £6.7 billion. For the financial year ending 31 December 2022, SVB UK recorded a profit before tax of £88 million. SVB UK’s tangible equity is expected to be around £1.4 billion. Final calculation of the gain arising from the acquisition will be provided in due course.’
The Bank of England has assured the safety of all depositors' funds with SVB UK, as the acquisition guarantees the continuity of banking services. As a result, SVB UK will not be subjected to insolvency proceedings.
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the government, in collaboration with the Bank of England, has facilitated a private sale of Silicon Valley Bank UK to HSBC. He further stated that depositors' funds will be protected without the need for any financial assistance from taxpayers.
The Bank of England has confirmed that Silicon Valley Bank UK's business operations will continue as usual under the ownership of HSBC. All services will remain unchanged, and customers should not anticipate any disruptions to their banking experience. Customers are encouraged to contact SVB UK through the regular communication channels, and loan repayments should continue to be made to SVB UK as usual. SVB UK's employees will remain employed by the bank, and the institution will retain its authorization from the PRA/FCA.
The Bank's statement also supersedes its previous declaration on March 10 that, in the absence of any significant additional information, it intended to seek a court order to place SVBUK into a Bank Insolvency Procedure. The emergence of a credible purchaser for SVBUK has led the Bank to exercise its resolution powers for stabilizing failing banks, rendering the previous statement moot.
The Bank of England also confirmed that no other U.K. banks will be materially affected by these actions or the resolution of SVBUK's U.S. parent bank, and that the wider U.K. banking system remains secure, robust, and adequately capitalized.
Noel Quinn, the CEO of HSBC Group, has expressed his enthusiasm for the acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank UK and extended a warm welcome to its customers in a statement. He affirmed that the deal aligns with the bank's strategic vision for the U.K. market and will reinforce its commercial banking capabilities, particularly in serving innovative and rapidly growing firms, including those in the technology and life science sectors, both in the U.K. and internationally.
Quinn further assured SVB UK customers that they could continue to bank with the same level of convenience and safety they are accustomed to, with the added assurance that their deposits are backed by the strength and security of HSBC. The CEO also expressed his eagerness to collaborate with SVB UK colleagues and strengthen the bank's position in the U.K. financial sector.
Dom Hallas, the Executive Director of Coadec, a non-profit organization that advocates for the interests of tech startups, has lauded the efforts of the U.K. government in facilitating the acquisition. He acknowledged the significant role played by various government bodies, including HM Treasury and the civil servants who worked tirelessly to secure the deal. Hallas also highlighted the importance of the government's intervention in protecting hundreds of the U.K.'s most innovative companies.
The sale of SVB UK to HSBC has spared the U.K. from the need to provide system-wide support to safeguard depositors' funds, a measure that the U.S. Treasury was forced to introduce in similar circumstances. Additionally, the acquisition has reduced the likelihood of the so-called 'moral hazard' risk, which occurs when failed banks and depositors expect to be bailed out by the government.
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Missing from the “story”: Ukraine’s agreement to never use Starlink for military purposes. This is why.
Ghacks quality is AI driven and very poor these days since AI is really artificial stupidity.
“Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson forced to ‘clarify’ book’s account of Starlink incident in Ukraine War
“To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”
https://nypost.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-biographer-walter-isaacson-corrects-detail-about-starlink-in-ukraine/
I posted above comment to:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/08/elon-musk-turned-off-starlink-during-ukranian-offence/
Not to the following article about Geforce where I currently also can see it published:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003/
Well, using Brave, I can see Llama 2 being decent, but it is still not great?
All these AI stuff seems more like a ‘toy’ than anything special, I mean, it is good for some stuff like translations or asking quick questions but not for asking anything important.
The problem is Brave made it mostly for summarizing websites and all that, but all these Big tech controlled stuff, won’t summarize articles it doesn’t agree with, so it is also useless in many situations where you just want it to give you a quick summarization, and then it starts throwing you little ‘speeches’ about how it doesn’t agree with it and then it never summarizes anything, but give you all the 30 paragraphs reasons why the article is wrong, like if I am asking it what it thinks.
SO all this AI is mostly a toy, but Facebook with all the power they have will be able to get so much data from people, it can ‘train’ or better say, write algorithms that will get better with time.
But It is not intelligence, it is really not intelligence all these AI technology.
Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]
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The eternal problematic of regulating, here applied to AI. Should regulations (interventionism) have interfered in the course of mankind ever since Adam and Eve where would we be now? Should spirituality, morality, ethics never have interfered where would we be now? I truly have always believed that the only possible consensus between ethics and freedom is that of individuals’ own consciousness.
Off-topic : Musk’s beard looks like a wound, AI-Human hand-shake is a quite nice pic :)
Haha, oh dear, Tom.
I thought that the comments system issue where comments shows up under a totally different article was fixed. But seeing your comment here, the “error” is clearly still active. Hopefully it is sorted as soon as possible.
Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]
—
Hi Karl :) Well, let’s remain positive and see the good sides : one’s comment appearing within different articles (the one it was written form and for, another unrelated one) brings ubiquity to that comment : say it once and it’s published twice, double your pleasure and double your fun (“with double-mint, double-mint gum” and old ad!). Let’s forget the complications and inherited misunderstandings it leads to. Not sure the fun is worth the complications though. Which is why, with a few others here, I include Article Title & URL with comment, to ease a bit the pain.
This said, I’m trying to find a logic key which would explain the mic-mac. One thing is sure : comments appearing twice keep the same comment number.
For instance my comment to which you replied just above is originally :
[https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/#comment-4573676]
It then got duplicated to :
[https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003/#comment-4573676]
Same comment number, which let’s me imagine comments are defined by their number as before but now dissociated in a way from their full path : that’s where something is broken, as i see it.
First amused me, then bothered, annoyed (I took some holidays to lower the pressure), then triggered curiosity.
I’m putting our best detectives on the affair, stay tuned.
Hehe, yes indeed, staying positive is what we should do. Good comes for those who wait, as the old saying goes. Hopefully true for this as well.
Interesting that the comments number stays the same, I noted that one thing is added to the duplicated comment in the URL, an error code, the following: “error-code-0x0003”.
Not useful for us, but hopefully for the developers (if there are any?), that perhaps will be able to sort this comments error out. Or our detectives, I hope they work hard on this as we speak ;).
Cheers and have a great weekend!
Whoops, my bad. I just now realized that the error I saw in your example URL (error-code-0x0003) was part of the linked article title and generated by Geforce! Oh dear! Why did I try to make it more confusing than it already is lol!
Original comment:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/08/elon-musk-turned-off-starlink-during-ukranian-offence/#comment-4573788
Duplicate:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/iphone-12-radiation-levels-are-too-high/#comment-4573788
Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]
—
@Karl, you write,
“I noted that one thing is added to the duplicated comment in the URL, an error code, the following: “error-code-0x0003”.”
I haven’t noticed that up to now but indeed brings an element to those who are actually trying to resolve the issue.
I do hope that Softonic engineers are working on fixing this issue, which may be more complicated than we can imagine. Anything to do with databases can become a nightmare, especially when the database remains accessed while being repaired, so to say.
P.S. My comment about remaining positive was, in this context, sarcastic. Your literal interpretation could mean you are, factually, more inclined to positiveness than I am myself : maybe a lesson of life for me :)
Have a nice, happy, sunny weekend as well :)
Correct: AI is certainly overhyped, it’s also advertised by some shady individuals. It’s can also be misused to write poor quality articles or fake your homework.
https://wordpress.com/support/post-vs-page/
https://wordpress.com/support/restore/
16 September 2023, this website is still experiencing issues with posts erroneously appearing in the wrong threads. There are even duplicates of the exact same post ID within the same page in some places.
Clerical error “[It] can also be misused …” you just can’t get the staff nowadays.
Obviously [#comment-4573795] was originally posted within [/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]. However, it has appeared misplaced within several threads.
Including the following:
[/2023/09/15/redmi-note-13-specs-release-date-and-more/]
[/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003]
“How much radiation is dangerous?
Ionizing radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays, is more energetic and potentially harmful. Exposure to doses greater than 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) in a short period can increase the risk of immediate health effects.
Above about 100 mSv, the risk of long-term health effects, such as cancer, increases with the dose.”
This ban is about NON-ionizing radiation limits, because there is too much radio wave power from the iphone. This has nothing to do with the much more dangerous ionizing radiations like X-rays, that are obviously not emitted at all by mobile phones. I invite you to correct your article.
“Aaro.mil makes history as the first official UFO website”
I wonder if it’s just smelly crowdsourcing for the spotting of chinese balloons or whatever paranoia they’re trying to instigate, or if they are also intentionally trying to look stupid enough to look for alien spaceships, for whatever reason. Maybe trying to look cute, instead of among the worst butchers of history ?
“The tech titan’s defense”
“Whether he provides a clear explanation or justifies his actions”
“the moral compass”
You take it for granted that this company should agree being a military communications provider on a war zone, and so directly so that his network would be used to control armed drones charged with explosives rushing to their targets.
You don’t need to repeat here everything you read in the mainstream press without thinking twice about it. You’re not just pointing interestingly that his company is more involved in the war that one may think at first and that this power is worrying, you’re also declaring your own support for a side in an imperialist killfest, blaming him for not participating enough in the bloodshed.
Now your article is unclear on how this company could be aware that its network is used for such military actions at a given time, which has implications of its own.
Reading other sources on that quickly, it seems that the company was: explicitly asked ; to extend its network geographically ; for a military attack ; at a time when there was no war but with the purpose of triggering it, if I understood well. You have to be joking if you’re crying about that not happening at that time. But today you have your war, be happy.