Silicon Valley Bank Depositors Cheer Cayman Islands Court Ruling

Silicon Valley Bank customers with accounts in the Cayman Islands may be getting their money back.

A Cayman Islands court approved a petition Thursday (June 29) that will dissolve the local branch of Silicon Valley Bank and that the depositors believe will give them a better chance of getting their money back, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Friday (June 30).

These depositors — many of which are venture capital (VC) funds in Hong Kong and China — were not covered by a deposit guarantee program like that provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), according to the report.

Together, those depositors had about $38 million in deposits in the bank, and they were left with nothing when it failed, the report said.

Silicon Valley Bank’s assets were seized by the FDIC, which later guaranteed deposits in the U.S. but not those in other countries, per the report.

Customers in the Cayman Islands told the court that the money in those accounts was earmarked to pay back loans taken from Silicon Valley Bank — loans which they are still expected to pay after the loans were bought by First Citizens Bank after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, according to the report.

They argued in their petition to the Cayman court that it was “just and equitable” for the local branch to be wound up because it couldn’t pay the debt, the report said.

The court also approved the appointment of liquidators who will challenge the FDIC’s classification of the Cayman depositors as unsecured creditors, per the report.

The firms whose loans were sold to First Citizens Bank had drawn on credit lines tied to their Silicon Valley Bank accounts and have been under pressure to repay those short-term loans after their deposits were seized by the FDIC.

The credit lines were originally provided by Silicon Valley Bank to many VC and private equity funds when their deposit accounts were set up.

Some of the customers of the Cayman branch had asked First Citizens if their loans could be set off with the deposits they had in their accounts.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed March 10 in one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history. The FDIC quickly stepped in and backstopped more than $175 million in U.S. deposits, many of which were uninsured, to prevent further contagion across the broader banking system.