No. of Recommendations: 7
""The bank and its advisers may have also made a tactical mistake: The...equity investment could have been completed overnight, but the bank's management also chose to sell convertible preferred stock, which couldn't be sold until the next day. That left time for investors ' and, more important, clients ' to start scratching their heads and sow doubt about the firm..."
From an SVB board perspective, what were the advantages of raising a portion of the suddenly-needed capital via convertible preferred stock? (Presumably with the alternative being just immediately issuing more common shares from their treasury?)"
One, thanks for the link to Rational Walk's technical description of what happened. I had already seen it, but it provides a great summary for anyone who cares to understand.
Two, I cannot answer your question about the advantages of issuing convertible preferred stock versus immediately issuing common shares other than to guess that the convertible preferred stock would have likely gone to preferred lenders at juicy terms. I am also guessing that they thought it might be an image thing. They were scared issuing common stock would make them look undercapitialized.
Three, the fact that it came down to a day or two for issuing preferred stock demonstrates an amazing level of incompetence by management and the BOD. The discrepancies between the hold to maturity investments and their actual value did not happen overnight. Those amounts had to be growing over many, many months. To have the bank blow up because management had to wait a day to sell preferred equity is like driving late at night down I-80 in the middle of Nebraska and see the flashing lights of multiple emergency vehicles many miles ahead of you, then when driving at 50 mph past the accident that all of the emergency vehicles were attending to, you hit a firefighter who accidentally walked too close to the open road and saying you didn't see him. No excuses. There was plenty of warning.
