Original SVB Securities Team Plans to Buy It Back, Excludes MoffettNathanson

A management team bidder group plans to acquire SVB Securities from SVB Financial Group.

The bidder group is led by SVB Securities CEO Jeff Leerink and backed by The Baupost Group, according to a Sunday (June 18) press release.

Upon closing the transaction, which is subject to final confirmation from the United States bankruptcy court and other customary closing conditions, the investment bank will be rebranded as Leerink Partners and will focus on healthcare. The deal doesn’t include SVB Securities research arm, MoffettNathanson, Reuters reported Sunday.

“The management team and I are excited to return to our heritage of owning and leading the premier healthcare investment bank and relaunching the business under the trusted Leerink Partners brand,” Leerink, who will be chairman and CEO of the firm, said in the release. “Our firm has been a strategic adviser to our corporate and investor clients for almost three decades and this transaction allows us to continue to provide our healthcare clients with the highest quality advice and execution services they have come to expect for their M&A [mergers and acquisitions], capital raising and investment needs.”

SVB Financial Group — the former parent company of Silicon Valley Bank — filed for bankruptcy in March, one week after that bank was taken over by regulators. The Chapter 11 filing did not include SVB Securities and SVB Capital’s funds and general partner entities, the company noted at the time.

It was reported May 31 that SVB Financial had drummed up little interest in SVB Securities and that there was only one bid that was at the time deemed to be a qualified bid. The bidders were not identified at the time, according to the Bloomberg Law report.

Following the closing of the planned transaction, with financial backing from The Baupost Group, the firm will continue its healthcare investment banking services that have included raising more than $230 billion of capital and advising on nearly $80 billion of M&A transactions for clients in the sector, according to the press release.

“Baupost has been a client of the firm for many years, and we know firsthand that when it comes to advisory, trading or research in the healthcare and biopharma industry, no one is better than Jeff and his extraordinary team,” The Baupost Group Partner Josh Greenhill said in the release. “When we got the chance to back them, we jumped at it.”