Amid yesterday’s market panic over Credit Suisse, hard-pressed shares in Serpahim Space (SSIT ) pulled off a surprise 5% rally after the investment trust ruled out any impact on net asset value from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, with which eight of its portfolio companies banked.

That spike in Seraphim has been largely reversed today, but it wasn’t alone in deriving a boost from coming clean on SVB, whose US deposits have been guaranteed by regulators and whose UK business has been sold to UK banking giant HSBC.

SUPP: Just 0.8%

Schroder UK Public Private (SUPP ), the former Woodford Patient Capital Trust trailing on an unloved 53% discount, also rallied 5%, or 0.6p, to 13.25, although that was from an-time low of 12.6p on Tuesday.

For anyone still holding shares bought in Neil Woodford’s hyped launch eight years ago, they hardly need reminding their stake has crashed 88% leaving the investment company with a value of just £120m against net assets of over £250m. Nor that they have more than halved since Schroders took over the distressed life sciences dominated portfolio in December 2019.

Fund managers Tim Creed and Roger Doig have begun to globalise SUPP’s investments and it’s hoped that will in time improve the situation. Meanwhile, the good news is that although some of SUPP’s portfolio companies used the tech startup lender in US and its UK subsidiary, this only affected around 0.8% of net assets.

The other point to note is that Creed, head of private equity investments, is now based in Switzerland, which is where Schroders Capital Management, the bit of Schroders that is responsible for SUPP, is headquartered following the acquisition of microfinance lender Blue Orchard in 2015.

Chrysalis ‘minimal’

Chrysalis Investments (CHRY ), Jupiter’s similarly out-of-favour growth capital fund, was not so lucky. It hasn’t made a statement on SVB, and its shares dropped 5.4% to 57.5p yesterday, leaving them on a 55% discount, having lost two thirds of their value in the past year.

However, through Numis Securities, one of its two corporate brokers, the £340m closed-end fund let it be known its exposure was also minimal. ‘We understand that Chrysalis had no direct exposure to SVB and only minimal exposure via portfolio companies which would not affect Chrysalis’s portfolio value in any material way,’ Numis analysts said.

F&C ‘immaterial’

At the other end of the scale, F&C (FCIT), the £4.7bn global equity trust trading on a much healthier 2% discount, clarified its ‘immaterial’ investment in Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) shares after we reported its 0.3% weighting at the end of February.

The FTSE-listed trust said it held 51,453 shares which before the stock’s suspension on 10 March had slumped to just £4.5m, or 0.09% of the portfolio. ‘The price of the holding has been written down to zero,’ it said.

F&C’s small stake is understood to have been split between two of the multi-manager trust’s strategies: a Sustainable investment mandate run by the trust’s fund manager Columbia Threadneedle and the US growth strategy that F&C manager Paul Niven recently switched from T Rowe Price to JP Morgan after its poor performance last year.

Elsewhere, it was other private equity and life science funds coming clean on their involvement in SVB, hoping news that all of the US bank’s deposits were being protected by regulators and that its UK subsidiary had been sold to HSBC, would calm investors.

Molten banked with SVB UK

Molten Ventures (GROW ), the AIM-listed venture capital investor in early-stage digital businesses, revealed that SVB UK provided 40% of its £60m undrawn borrowing facility and £90m loan, with JP Morgan the rest.

It said the facilities continued to be available through HSBC and that it had cash of over £30m, of which less than £1m was deposited with SVB UK.

‘As regards to Molten’s portfolio companies, the recent positive developments means that it does not anticipate any meaningful liquidity impact from the failure of SVB or SVB UK,’ it said, adding that most of Molten’s core companies were well diversified in terms of their banking relationships. 

Molten shares have fallen 14% in the past week, taking its one-year decline to 56% and leaving them on a yawning 62% discount that values the company at £483m. It’s frustrating for a company that last month sought to reassure investors about the strength of its companies but said it was battening down the hatches and scaling back its pace of investment.

HarbourVest: 2% cash

HarbourVest Global Private Equity (HVPE ), at £1.6bn the biggest of the London-listed private equity fund of funds, has also seen its depressed shares take a hit from the panic over SVB. The stocks has fallen over 7% in the past five days, leaving the trust trading at half its asset value in line with peers.

On Monday it disclosed that SVB was one of many banking institutions that provided it with credit facilities, accounting for just 2% of cash held by HarbourVest funds, but 6% of the subscription lines which they use to make new investments.

Oakley and SVB UK

Oakley Capital Investments (OCI) fared slightly better in the backlash. Having last week published a 24% underlying investment return for 2022, albeit one that underpinned a shareholder return of just 1% as its stock slid to a 32% discount, it told analysts that the investment company and its portfolio companies had no direct exposure to SVB or Signature, the second US bank that failed last weekend. Its fund manager Oakley Capital, whose private equity funds it invests in, had a small proportion of loan facilities with SVB UK, which Numis expected had moved to HSBC.

Life sciences fund RTW Venture (RTW ) followed rival Syncona (SYNC ) - and also Augmentum Fintech (AUGM), Apax Global (APAX), Biopharma Credit (BPCR) and IPO Group (IPO) - in disclosing its position on Monday.

It said four of its unlisted companies representing 1.7% of NAV had ‘some exposure’ to SVB. ‘Following the US regulator move to guarantee deposits, no impact on NAV is expected,’ it said, adding the company and its manager had no direct exposure to SVB.