First Citizens Buy SVB; Twitter Value Declines

by Grace Dillon on 27th Mar 2023 in News

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: First Citizens agree to buy SVB; Twitter's value more than halves and the firm's source code is leaked; and the CMA update their provisional findings from their probe into Microsoft's planned purchase of Activision Blizzard.

SVB purchased by First Citizens

First Citizens have agreed to buy Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) following their dramatic collapse. The deal, which was announced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today, will see First Citizens take ownership of around USD $72bn (~£58.8bn) worth of assets for just USD $16.5bn (~£13.5bn). The FDIC will continue to hold around USD $90bn (~£73.4bn) of the US lender’s assets “in receivership of disposition.”

Twitter value sinks, company suffers source code leak

An internal memo sent by Elon Musk indicates that Twitter’s value has more than halved. Based on Musk’s offer of stock grants, the social media firm is currently worth USD $20bn (~£16.3bn), a steep decline from the USD $44bn (~£35.9bn) the Tesla-owner bought it for last October.

News also emerged that the source code behind Twitter’s app had been leaked. According to reports, the code was partially published on GitHub “for at least several months” before Twitter execs became aware of the leak.

CMA amend Microsoft-Activision probe findings

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have updated the provisional findings of their investigation into Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard. The watchdog revealed that, after assessing “a significant amount of new evidence” along with information gathered earlier, they have provisionally concluded that the merger “will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK.”

The watchdog will continue to assess how the merger could affect the cloud gaming market, with the investigation set to conclude with the publication of a final report next month.