Last year, Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse was a titanic, historic failure. As it happened, SVB’s rapid unraveling marked the largest bank failure since 2008, and since then it’s been hard to believe that there’s a full-throated future for what was once tech’s favorite bank.
In the shakeup since, company veteran Marc Cadieux became president of what is now First Citizens-owned SVB. Once the guitarist for SVB’s in-house band, Cadieux has decided he wants to be responsible for righting a ship that’s still somewhat underwater. Why?
“I could have left, sure. My phone rang like I imagine everyone else’s did, but I had zero interest in doing it,” he said. “There was that initial period of uncertainty…but at SVB I and so many of my colleagues felt we’d built something super special. We saw an opportunity to bring it back.”
Today’s SVB is a fragmented version of its former self, which makes telling the bank’s story complicated. You have to clarify which SVB you’re talking about.
In this case: Last March, First Citizens acquired SVB’s commercial and private banking business, which was about 70% of the bank’s total assets—that is Cadieux’s SVB. Elsewhere, SVB’s investment banking division was sold back to founder Jeff Leerink, while the venture capital and fund of funds business remain part of bankruptcy proceedings.
It’s hard to tell how much of what was once SVB persists today, in Cadieux and First Citizens’ SVB. (PitchBook data suggests crucial talent has jumped ship to competitors like HSBC or JPMorgan Chase.) However, Cadieux aims to send a clear message now—that SVB is open, and that he knows winning back trust is a process.
“Trust takes a long time to earn after such a sudden, dramatic destruction of it,” he said. He says the bank has had “some success” thus far. Cadieux tells me SVB’s retained as much as 80% of its pre-collapse talent. Additionally, slightly over 80% of the company’s “pre-March” clients still have active accounts at the bank. Since April, total deposits (currently about $38.5 billion) have stayed stable.
“Pre-March” isn’t my distinction—it’s the phrase SVB’s fact sheet uses. I asked Cadieux where he was last March when he got the news. He says he was home, getting ready to go into the Palo Alto office. He doesn’t remember if it was a call or an email, but as Chief Credit Officer at the time, he was soon among the small group of executives talking to potential acquirers. Cadieux calls that time “a bit of a blur.”
Here’s what I keep going back to: that he was the guitarist in SVB’s humorously-named corporate band, “The Exploding Warrants.” I imagine Cadieux playing guitar on the deck of a sinking ship last March, but now finding himself in the captain’s chair, trying to steer the company through difficult waters.
“In the fullness of time, if we haven’t won everybody back over yet, I’m confident we will—or at least we’re not going to stop trying.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Freenome, a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company developing blood tests for early cancer detection, raised $254 million in funding. Roche led the round and was joined by a16z Life Sciences Growth Fund, BrightEdge Ventures, ARK Investments, ArrowMark Partners, Quest Diagnostics, Squarepoint Capital, and others.
- Kairos Aerospace, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of technology designed to capture methane emissions data for the energy industry, raised $52 million in Series D funding. BlackRock led the round and was joined by Hartree Partners, DCVC, Climate Investment, and Energy Innovation Capital.
- Monumental, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based developer of robots for the construction industry, raised $25 million in funding. Plural and Hummingbird led the round and was joined by Northzone, Fundamental, NP-Hard Ventures, and others.
- Exponential Markets, a New York City-based developer of financial risk mitigation tools, raised $10.3 million in seed funding. MaC Venture Capital led the round and was joined by Citi, Autotech Ventures, and Avanta Ventures.
- Permit.io, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of permissions and authorization technology, raised $8.3 million in Series A funding. Scale Venture Partners led the round and was joined by NFX, Verissimo Ventures, Roosh Ventures, Firestreak, and others.
- Blueprint Finance, a New York City-based developer of an on-chain credit market, raised $7.5 million in funding. Hashed and Tribe Capital led the round and was joined by SALT, Hypersphere, Lightshift, Awesome People Ventures, Veris Ventures, and others.
- Silencio, a Munich, Germany-based provider of noise pollution sensors, raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. Borderless Capital led the round and was joined by Moonrock Capital, Master Ventures, and others.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- .406 Ventures, a Boston, Mass.-based venture capital firm, raised $265 million for its fifth fund focused on companies in healthcare, data + AI, and cybersecurity.
PEOPLE
- Norwest Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif., San Francisco, Mumbai, India, and Tel Aviv-based venture capital firm, promoted Ran Ding to general partner and co-head of the growth equity team, Nikhil Kookada and Ankit Prasad to principal, and Krish Kapadia and Jordan Leites to vice president.
- Vista Equity Partners, an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm, hired Dan Parant as managing director and global head of private wealth. Formerly, Parant was with KKR.
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