Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Customers express calm after being able to pull money
MENLO PARK – Several dozen people waited in line outside Silicon Valley Bank's Menlo Park branch throughout the day Monday to pull out their money after the bank's swift and spectacular failure last week.
"We were fine. It was just an issue of, 'Okay, what are we going to do? Do we leave it there or do we take it out' Like I said, we decided to take it out. And I was here this morning to take care of that," said Elisa Spurlin, owner of Peabody Gallery in Menlo Park.
Spurlin said she had a rainy-day investment account at the bank which she planned to close at the urging of her parents.
"People will get through the line; they'll get what they need, and then things will settle down. And that's what I hope for, is a quick settling down of everything," she said, urging calm and patience after a weekend of worry and rattled nerves following the bank's collapse.
The White House announced Sunday that all deposits -- even those in excess of $250,000 -- would be guaranteed and accessible to bank customers. The move was mean to reassure investors and stabilize the banking industry as a whole.
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"We were pretty worried over the weekend. We were watching the news all the time. I checked on Google like 20 times an hour," says Sam Liang, CEO of Otter.AI -- a software startup based in Mountain View.
Liang said he had several million dollars tied up in the bank. He said the President Joe Biden's announcement put his company and countless others back on a firm financial footing.
"Definitely reassuring. I think the government, this time, moved really fast. They did a good job," he said.
Silicon Valley Bank was a pillar of the tech industry and the financial institution of choice for many venture capital firms. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) said the Biden administration's actions helped limit the fallout for the bank's failure.
"Very important that the stability has been brought, not only to this bank, but to the banking system," Lofgren said.
