The biotech company Pharming has a total of $45 million in an account as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapses. This is about a quarter of all cash held by Leiden. Given the uncertain status, Pharming doesn’t know how much money will come back from those 45 million and when.
Pharming’s assets were held in accounts with Silicon Valley Bank and its British subsidiary, SVB UK. The American accounts were $26 million, and the British $19 million. Different amounts locked in are applied to both accounts. Pharming knows for sure that it will get $250,000 back from the US account, compared to £85,000 for the UK account. That’s over $100,000.
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Pharming’s ability to recover more money or even all of its assets depends on any settlements from the US and UK governments or the sale of the SVB to another bank. The American insurance organization FDIC has already announced that it will pay account holders with uninsured assets a percentage of their holdings next week. But the American Washington Post reported that if no buyer could be found, the US government would even want to insure all of the assets. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already indicated that bailing out the SVB itself is out of the question.
UK emergency aid
The British government has indicated that it will come up with an emergency support package for startups that have lost their assets with SVB. This would allow them to continue paying wages and other ongoing costs. But the details are not there yet. Not expected until Monday.
Pharming itself says it will make “every effort” to recover money from the US and UK.
SVB collapsed on Friday after a bank buyout occurred. The bank has invested a relatively large portion of the funds under its management in low interest government bonds. But due to the deteriorating economy, many SVB clients needed more available funds. The bank could only sell government bonds quickly at a loss, so the board tried to raise money by issuing shares instead, but that led to turmoil in the stock markets and spilled over to customers. On Friday, they attempted to withdraw $42 billion from their SVB accounts before the bank collapsed and US regulators took over.
