- Balance Sheet
- Posts
- Sillycon Valley Bank
Sillycon Valley Bank
Silicon Valley Bank’s unrealized loss
The Mormon Church and its advisers will pay $5 million in fines over claims it concealed $32 billion in equity investments. Neither has admitted wrongdoing. God has denied knowing about the secret investments, explaining that his omniscience can be blocked by the clever use of shell companies.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/b6b69757-9eb1-4dc6-8b5e-82186a902e00/Screenshot_2023-02-24_at_09.22.38.png)
The lowdown
🎬 Netflix cut the prices of subscription plans in some markets to maintain subscriber growth, shares fell.
🍕 Shares in Domino’s Pizza tumble after the company mostly misses estimates.
🥩 Beyond Meat’s sales beat expectations as the company moves closer to profitability.
Featured stories
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/ee91e553-989a-4400-bdbf-fd59aea77823/silicon_valley.png)
Credit: HBO
Silicon Valley Bank’s unrealized loss
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) mainly provides banking services to tech companies and VCs. It takes the cash deposits of tech companies and often loans the funds back out to VCs or private equity.
SVB is a central figure in financing US startups and has total assets worth $212 billion. The bank is currently facing scrutiny over a $91 billion investment of its assets into a bond portfolio that has resulted in an unrealized loss of $15 billion ($).
The poor performance of the bonds is a consequence of rising interest rates. As rates have increased, investors demand a higher rate of return to hold the bonds and so the market value has fallen far below the face value.
The loss will only be realized if the bank sells the bonds, which it has committed not to do ($). It’s true that the bank does have other capital to rely on. But with a market cap of only $17 billion – only just higher than the unrealized loss – things could get ugly fast.
Pigment is an enterprise-grade business planning platform.
Combining powerful modelling with simplicity of use, Pigment gives Finance, HR, and Sales teams a 360 degree view of their business and allows them to collaborate seamlessly. Industry-leading companies like Figma, Gong, Deliveroo and Webhelp trust Pigment every day, allowing them to make confident and accurate decisions in real-time.
Find out more about Pigment here. (Sponsored)
The content we're consuming today
The Economist: Demands on corporate boards are more intense than ever ($).
Foreign Policy: The Beautiful, Dumb Dream of McDonald’s Peace Theory.
The Economist Podcasts: Money Talks: Could K-pop become a monopoly?
Off-balance sheet items
Good news for Lord of the Rings fans. Warner Bros has confirmed that the studio is working on new films based on JRR Tolkien’s novels. Not surprising when you look at the box office numbers.
The bottom line
The Mormon church after the SEC fines them $5 million buckaroos for hiding an investment portfolio of $32 BILLION DOLLARS.
— cam (@privatebankass)
9:19 PM • Feb 23, 2023