> On March 19, 2009, a seven-member investor group, IMB Holdco, led by Steven Mnuchin—which included billionaire Christopher Flowers, John Paulson, Michael Dell, and George Soros—purchased Independent National Mortgage Corporation (IndyMac Bank) of Pasadena, California for $13.65 billion from the FDIC and created OneWest from the remains of IndyMac
In this case they created a new bank. From an outsider's perspective, it implies the bank run was either too sudden, or SVB would have been too expensive, for FDIC to be able to run an expedited auction.
In one of the earlier two threads a poster linked to this segment of 60 Minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAE8i40A5uI . (I would link to the comment directly but I can't find it right now. Apologies to the poster.) In case of a relatively small bank, the FDIC had run a secret auction a few days earlier, and had an acquirer ready on the day.
SVB was pretty big. Lining up a buyer that can absorb and handle a balance of ~$200B might take a while, and interestingly there may be political reasons to discourage depositor haircuts. Buying at firesale prices favours those with deep enough pockets. Buying at par (or near enough) needs more than just money - it gives advantage to those who can do extensive diligence really fast.
If you are willing to sell at a discount, you can sell faster.
But more importantly, you probably don't have as many highly paid bankers, lawyers, accountants and regulators trying to push the deal through. Nobody could afford that.
