Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Silicon Valley Bank Is For Sale

SVB: M&A

Would you want to buy Silicon Valley Bank? You get three main things:

1. A big portfolio of Treasury bonds and agency mortgage-backed securities. These are worth what they’re worth: There’s a pretty liquid market for them and not much dispute about their value. They’re worth a lot less than SVB paid for them, which is a big part of why SVB failed last week, but they’re worth a lot more today than they were last week, because SVB failed and so everyone panicked and rushed to buy safe assets like Treasuries.

• 2. A portfolio of loans. The loans ...