Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse Had a UK Silver Lining

When HSBC bought the UK unit of Silicon Valley Bank over one frantic March weekend, the chief executive of the bank’s UK arm at the time, Erin Platts, was surprised. Having spent almost 20 years with SVB, she wasn’t expecting such a swift end for the lender. But afterwards, she found herself surprised by how positive the outcome was for her and her team.

“We had a vision to support innovation businesses,” Platts says, “full transactional banking capabilities, full private banking wealth capabilities, full investment banking capabilities, everywhere they wanted to go. But it was going to take us five to seven years to build that from the ground up in the old SVB UK business. HSBC has all those capabilities…so our 2030 strategy just arrived.”

On June 12 at the London Tech Week conference, HSBC announced it was relaunching SVB UK as HSBC Innovation Banking—with Platts still at the helm. She joins this week’s In the City podcast with David Merritt and Francine Lacqua to discuss her outlook for the City’s technology scene as it vies for AI startups—and tries to escape Silicon Valley’s shadow.

Also in the episode, Merritt speaks with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Khan acknowledges the challenges London faces, like losing innovators to the US and Europe, and says “we have to recognize on our doorstep is a market of more than 500 million people, the European Union.”

“The government understands some of these issues” Khan explains. “The only problem is the prime minister is too weak to take them on.” A Labour government, he says, will work toward closer links with the EU.