China’s Andon Health says it has full access to funds parked at collapsed lender SVB

By Laura He, CNN

China’s Andon Health, a maker of medical devices, says it has full access to funds parked at Silicon Valley Bank, after the US government intervened to backstop all the deposits at the failed lender.

The Tianjin-based company, which manufactures consumer health devices and supplied Covid test kits to the United States during the pandemic, has cash deposits at SVB worth 5% of its total cash and cash equivalents.

That amounts to approximately 675 million yuan ($98 million), according to calculations based on its most recent earnings report.

“Our deposits at Silicon Valley Bank can be used in full and have not suffered any losses,” the company said in a Tuesday filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The announcement comes after the US government took extraordinary measures on Sunday to avert a potential banking crisis following the collapse of SVB. Those measures include guaranteeing that customers of the bank will have access to all their money starting Monday.

By doing that, US regulators aimed to prevent more bank runs and to help companies that deposited large sums with affected banks to continue to make payroll and fund their operations

The collapse of SVB, which courted Chinese start-ups, has caused widespread concern in China, where a string of founders and companies rushed to appease investors by saying their exposure was insignificant or nonexistent.

So far, more than a dozen of firms have issued statements trying to pacify investors or clients, saying that their exposure to SVB was limited. Most were biotech companies.

SVB, which worked with nearly half of all venture-backed tech and healthcare companies in the United States before it was taken over by the government, has a Chinese joint venture, which was set up in 2012 and targeted the country’s tech elite.

The SPD Silicon Valley Bank, which was owned 50-50 owned by SVB and local partner Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, said Saturday that its operations were “sound.”

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