SVB had a bonus schedule like every other company, and paid out those bonuses to all eligible employees. The payments were for work done in 2022. There is literally nothing to see here.
While the fact that the bonuses were paid at the time does help underscore the level of malfeasance of the bank leadership, many of those receiving the bonuses probably didn’t know about the gaps.
This doesn't say "executive bonuses." I would not be surprised if SVB employs customer service teller-type-people making $60k/year with an annual $5k bonus, and this headline would be consistent with such people getting their scheduled bonuses paid on time. The headline says nothing about what the compensation level or responsibility of the people getting paid bonuses was.
Bonuses are often calculated months in advance, and employees are also normally told about them weeks or more before they are paid (they're often even in contracts).
Despite the guy on Twitter calling the SVB issues in January, and arguably long term mismanagement that led to the downfall, the actual issues happened rapidly, over a matter of days.
These just didn't happen on the same time scale, and bonuses can't be undone in a matter of days with employees expecting them and even contracts demanding them.
There's a lot of reasonable takes on this whole terrible situation, but implying or suggesting that the bonus payouts were part of it or that employees are to blame for taking them is a terrible take.
Bonuses just got issued at most if not all SV companies, I work at Uber and ours checked in 3/13, so more money is the last thing SV techies need at this time. The funds should have been directed to orgs supporting freelancers etc
From the headline I thought maybe they had accelerated the bonus payout schedule to squeeze money out of the company before the collapse, but the article says it was scheduled long ago:
> What to know: The bonuses were for work done during 2022, and were previously scheduled to be disbursed on March 10. That date ultimately coincided with the bank's takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Furthermore, bonuses that were scheduled later in the month weren't paid out:
> Bonuses for employees in some other countries were scheduled for later in the month, so those haven't yet been paid.
So while the headline sounds bad and is likely going to generate outrage, this really just reads like normal payroll processing was happening on schedule.
Note that payroll would have been coming out of a completely different bucket (e.g. not from customer reserves) and would have been submitted for processing prior to March 10th in order to be disbursed on March 10th. Also note that bonuses are an integral part of compensation, so withholding already-earned compensation from regular employees (the majority of which had nothing to do with the collapse issues) is an unreasonably punitive idea.
So basically, the timing was coincidence unless someone can come up with some weird evidence that bankers delayed the collapse just long enough to get their bonuses, which seems far fetched. The collapse was triggered when they ran out of liquidity due to customer actions, which they couldn't have prevented.
There's a similar outrage-bait story circulating about executives selling stock prior to the collapse, but that was also pre-scheduled sales that were planned long in advance.
Q1 is a common time to pay out last year's bonuses. And TBH, I don't think most of the bank workers share any blame for SVB collapse, and they did work the whole 2022 so I don't think it would be fair for them not to get the bonuses they earned. And given that they'll find themselves out of a job very soon, I don't think it's a bad thing - at least they have some cushion while they're looking for the next job. I mean, if we're talking about C* suite, they probably didn't really deserve any bonus, but if we're looking at line workers in the branches, it's not their fault somebody made mistake with investments.
and the rest of the 178 employees will each receive $371,000.
So they get a one-time mid-level banking bonus, and now they work for a completely different company and almost certainly in positions lower than what they used to have.
It's not "parasitic," it's an incentive structure. Bonuses are standard practice in the financial sector intended to reward high effort and good performance.
Unless you believe nearly every employee at SVB down to the entry level is in some way responsible for this, then complaining about bonuses doesn't make any sense.
For the record, I don't think they should be bailed out.
Sure they could. To put it in perspective, thousands of companies are unable to pay their employees and vendors this week due to the SVB collapse.
It does not seem unreasonable that SVB employee bonuses for "great job done in 2022" should have been delayed given the clear evidence on Thursday that the bank was imploding.
This is the time of the year when banks pay bonuses for the prior years work. My understanding is it was scheduled annually at the same time and happened to occur the day they went insolvent. Frankly I’m down with Nancy in client confirm generation getting her bonus. The senior managers all got fired and their comp clawed back, so seems legit.
It appears you're injecting a lot of details into the situation that were not specified in the article, seemingly to stir the pot. I see no mention of "executive bonuses" specifically - just bonuses, which are common for employees on the lower rungs as well. What makes you think there aren't "single mothers working two jobs" at SVB?
https://www.cnbctv18.com/market/silicon-valley-bank-employee...
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