A group led by SVB Securities CEO Jeff Leerink will buy Silicon Valley Bank’s investment-banking business from its bankrupt former parent company and rebrand it Leerink Partners, SVB Securities said in a release Sunday.
The buyers will pay $55 million for the business and repay about $26 million of SVB Financial Group’s debt, according to a filing in bankruptcy court. The buyers will also assume deferred banker compensation liabilities and allow SVB Financial to keep 5% equity in the investment bank.
The transaction, backed by hedge fund Baupost Group, could receive court approval by the end of this month, according to the Financial Times.
Equity-research business MoffettNathanson, which SVB bought in 2021, is not included in the deal and will remain under SVB Financial.
“The management team and I are excited to return to our heritage of owning and leading the premier healthcare investment bank and relaunching the business,” Leerink said in a statement Sunday.
SVB Financial bought Leerink’s business in 2019 for $280 million.
“We know first-hand that, when it comes to advisory, trading or research in the healthcare and biopharma industry, no one is better than Jeff,” said Josh Greenhill, a partner at Baupost, which had been a Leerink and SVB client of several years. “When we got the chance to back them, we jumped at it.”
Bidding opens for SVB’s German branch
Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — the regulator that took over SVB — is set to open a data room Tuesday to qualified bidders for the failed bank’s German operations.
The bid deadline is July 19 for a $460 million portfolio of loans, commitments for another $494 million in lending and “other assets in Frankfurt and Berlin.”
Bidders must be authorized to lend in the German market, according to marketing materials distributed to large investors by First Financial Network. Bidders may include a bank licensed to operate in Germany, the European Union and European Economic Area countries, or a non-EEA licensed bank that has a German branch.
HSBC has emerged as a potential buyer, Reuters reported. The bank acquired SVB’s U.K. subsidiary in March for £1.
The sale would represent the latest step in the FDIC’s efforts to resolve the failed bank in an “orderly and gradual manner,” a spokesperson for the regulator told the Financial Times.
