On March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank was seized by the FDIC in the second-largest US bank failure in history. By Monday March 13, the FDIC had announced that SVB depositors would be made whole — a decision that prevented a broader financial crisis — but SVB itself was closed and its approximately 8,500 employees were facing immediate uncertainty about their employment.
For most of those 8,500 employees, the immediate practical question was the same: what happens to my unvested equity, and who calls me first? For the 300 to 400 people who were senior enough that their institutional knowledge, client relationships, and professional networks had significant market value, the question was slightly different: who calls me first, and should I pick up?
Who moved where
The dispersal of SVB senior talent in the 60 days following the bank’s failure was faster than almost any comparable institutional disruption we’ve observed. Within two weeks of the failure, most senior SVB bankers had at least one substantive conversation with a competing institution. Within six weeks, the majority had accepted new positions.
The destinations broke roughly as follows: approximately 40% of senior SVB talent moved to other major commercial banks (JPMorgan, First Citizens, which acquired SVB’s bridge bank, HSBC, and others); approximately 30% moved to regional banks that saw an opportunity to acquire SVB-relationship-manager capability; approximately 20% moved to investment banks and advisory firms; and approximately 10% moved to VC-backed financial services companies or took advisory roles.
The striking pattern was the geographic concentration of where they moved: most senior SVB talent, despite SVB’s strong concentration in the Bay Area, remained geographically anchored. The clients, the community relationships, and the deal-flow context that made SVB bankers valuable were Bay Area-specific. Moving to New York for a competing bank role meant leaving behind the relationship advantage that made you attractive in the first place.
The compensation effect
The abruptness of the SVB failure created unusual compensation dynamics. On one hand, competing institutions were genuinely eager to acquire SVB talent and relationship books, which created bidding dynamics not typically seen in financial services hiring. We observed sign-on packages in the $300,000 to $800,000 range for senior SVB bankers, justified as "make-whole" payments for forfeited deferred compensation and unvested equity.
On the other hand, the failed-bank context created specific vulnerabilities in the negotiation. SVB bankers who had not yet received their 2022 annual bonuses (the failure happened in March, before the typical February/March bonus payout) were negotiating from a position of financial pressure. Acquiring institutions were aware of this and some were less generous than they would have been in a more competitive market where candidates had more time to consider their options.
The practical lesson: in any institutional failure scenario, the candidates who negotiated best were those who had relationships with recruiters before the failure. The ones who had to start from scratch — who had never spoken to an external recruiter because they were comfortable at SVB and not contemplating a move — were typically disadvantaged in the first weeks of the market, when the best opportunities were moving quickly.
How the network dispersed
The most interesting aspect of the SVB talent dispersal, from a career-network perspective, was how it accelerated the pre-existing geographic diversification of Bay Area finance. SVB had been one of the primary institutional anchors of the San Francisco-San Jose banking ecosystem. Many senior SVB bankers moved to institutions headquartered outside California, while maintaining Bay Area-based client relationships. This contributed, in a modest but real way, to the further normalization of Bay Area finance operating through institutions headquartered elsewhere.
The SVB failure also created an accelerated mentorship and network transfer that typically happens more gradually. Junior SVB bankers who had been building relationships with established senior colleagues over years suddenly found those colleagues accessible in a different way — both because the institutional hierarchy had dissolved and because the senior colleagues were actively reaching out to maintain professional relationships as they moved to new platforms. Several people we subsequently placed described the SVB failure period as, paradoxically, the most valuable professional-network-building experience of their careers.
Lessons for senior finance careers
Three enduring lessons for senior finance professionals from the SVB experience:
First, institutional security is less durable than it appears. SVB was, in March 2023, a well-regarded institution with 40 years of history and strong relationships across the startup and venture community. Its failure, when it came, was rapid enough that employees had essentially no warning time to prepare their external options. Maintaining an active external network — not necessarily because you plan to leave, but because the option has value — is a legitimate form of career risk management.
Second, relationship capital is portable in ways that financial capital is not. SVB bankers who brought strong VC and founder relationships to their new institutions were able to transfer much of their professional value despite the disruption. The relationship book traveled; the unvested equity did not.
Third, institutional crises create hiring anomalies that can benefit both talent and employers. The sign-on packages offered to senior SVB talent were, in several cases, materially more generous than comparable voluntary-departure negotiations would have produced. For well-positioned candidates in distressed institutional situations, the market temporarily operates in their favor.
The equity and deferred comp treatment
One of the most consequential and under-discussed aspects of the SVB failure was the treatment of unvested equity and deferred compensation. Unlike a standard voluntary resignation or even a standard layoff, a bank failure creates a specific legal and regulatory context for employee compensation that most affected employees had never seen before.
The FDIC receivership immediately froze the company's operational assets, which created uncertainty about whether unvested restricted stock would be accelerated, forfeited, or settled at some future date based on recoveries from the receivership estate. For senior SVB employees with significant unvested equity, this uncertainty was the most acute financial concern in the first week — not the loss of income, which they expected to quickly replace, but the potential loss of accumulated unvested equity that represented several years of retention compensation.
The resolution: First Citizens Bank's acquisition of SVB's bridge bank included provisions for treating some unvested equity, but the terms were case-specific and required legal navigation that most employees weren't prepared for. Employees who had employment attorneys review their agreements in the first two weeks of the receivership generally did better than those who relied on the company's (now non-existent) HR function to clarify their rights. The lesson for senior finance professionals generally: understanding your equity and deferred compensation agreements well enough to evaluate their treatment in a change-of-control or insolvency scenario is insurance that is worth buying before you need it.
How SVB experience reads on a resume
A question we got frequently in the months after the SVB failure: does "Silicon Valley Bank" on a resume hurt? The short answer, based on subsequent hiring conversations with clients, is no — in fact, for many roles it helps. Senior SVB bankers demonstrated, through the failure and dispersal, that they had genuine client relationships, genuine institutional knowledge, and genuine professional resilience under pressure. The failure reflected macroeconomic and structural factors at the bank's management level; individual banker reputations were largely intact. We placed several former SVB professionals into roles where their SVB background was explicitly cited as a positive — evidence that they had navigated a one-in-a-generation institutional crisis and emerged professionally credible. For context on how financial services talent markets have continued to evolve, see our Miami finance hub piece.