Living in two worlds

 

MORPHEUS:  You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.  You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

After decades in banking, I thought I'd seen everything. But last week, with a jolt to my system, I was unfortunately proven wrong. This would turn out to be one of the worst weeks in my life. I kept thinking I must be dreaming this!

I'm used to working within my banking matrix with some level of control. If I needed to help a client with something, normally I could find a way. In this circumstance, that wasn't the case. I should have taken the blue pill to wake up in bed, in control, and believing what I believed. But I took the red pill and didn't like the reality that I awoke to find.

I was inward for that one fateful Friday when the bank was taken over. All I knew was I'd lost a substantial amount of money in the bank's stock, and the FDIC had given me a 45-day contract to work for them. That will make anyone nervous. 

But the next day I grasped the truth, that this altered state of reality had impacted an ecosystem of relationships that is extended and complex - the most important of whom are our clients. This solution wouldn't be about me finding my next job. I needed to solve problems for everyone else, and my situation would sort itself out by helping others. The next day, I was blogging and engaging to open lines of dialogue.

Silicon Valley Bank: What comes next?

Processing

For those who've read this blog before, you may notice the headline slide has changed from SVB on Wine, to Rob McMillan on Wine. I know I don't need to explain that change. 

This is a horrible message for me to have to write. I was asked to stay silent the past few days by SVB but now that the die is cast, I thought I should sit down and share what I know.

To start, my employer formerly known as Silicon Valley Bank, no longer exists. I'm still processing the whole thing as are most people associated with the bank. 

On Friday morning, clients, employees, bank suppliers and shareholders all awoke to the same news: SVB has been taken over by the FDIC. For everyone involved, there is a range of emotions to process; fear, anxiety, anger and so much more. I'm personally cycling through all of the same emotions.

The 2023 SVB Annual State of the Industry Report will be released January 18th

 Register here for the videocast, replay, presentation deck, and copy of this year's report.

Within the 2022 SVB State of the Wine Industry Survey run last October, we asked how 2022 went and got the following response. (See headline slide) 

Forty-percent of respondents said that the year was one of their better years or their best year ever. Fully sixty-five percent said it was a good year, and those results are very close to those from 2019 when we asked the same question.