Fourth: The bank then began searching for ways to meet customers’ withdrawals, as the bank sold the bond portfolio at a loss for the purpose of financing deposit withdrawals, and that was two days before the collapse, as the bank sold a $21 billion bond portfolio consisting mostly of US Treasury bonds. The portfolio yielded an average return of 1.79%, well below the 10-year Treasury yield of around 3.9%. This forced SVB to admit a loss of $1.8 billion, which it needed to offset through a capital increase.
