Silicon Valley Bank after the panic, the rescue, and the lawsuits

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse was one of the defining financial shocks of 2023. The immediate public memory is a digital-age bank run and a weekend rescue operation. But what happened next is what makes the story fit this format. After regulators closed the bank in March 2023, the U.S. government moved to backstop all deposits, even those above the normal insurance cap, to prevent a broader contagion. Soon after, First Citizens acquired much of the failed bank's deposits and loans. That stabilized the headline crisis, but it did not end the story. By 2025, the FDIC had sued 17 former SVB executives and directors, accusing them of gross negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty. A separate court fight also allowed SVB's former parent to continue pursuing a claim over nearly $2 billion in seized deposits. So the fuller ending is not just that the bank failed and somebody bought the pieces. It is that one of the largest U.S. bank collapses in years turned into a still-unfolding argument over who caused it and who should pay for the damage.