The UK subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank is saved by HSBC, with the support of the Bank of England

The largest failure of a US bank since 2008 occurred on Friday when US regulators shut down Santa Clara, California-based Silicon Valley Bank, which specialised in lending to technology companies.

Experts claim that while though SVB’s UK division was modest, with just about 3,000 company clients, the tech industry, which is important to Britain’s economic expansion, would have been at risk in the event of the division’s collapse.