US regional banks face challenging future in the aftermath of SVB blowup

More than a dozen suspend trading

A crisis has emerged among US regional banks in recent days, as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has pushed the sector to its limits and raised questions around its stability.

The failures of SVB, with $209bn in assets, and Signature Bank, with $118bn in assets, represent two of the three biggest bank failures in US history, eclipsed only by the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008. Meanwhile, trading of more than a dozen regional banks was suspended yesterday (13 March), with one, First Republic, falling by 61.8% in a day before it was suspended, according to data from Morningstar. At the end of last year, First Republic had $212bn in assets and $176.4bn in deposits, with about 70% of its deposits uninsured. This is above the median of 55% for regional...