First Citizens sues HSBC for stealing SVB staff and secrets as part of ‘Project Colony’ scheme
- HSBC poached 42 bankers and misused SVB’s confidential, proprietary and trade secret information following the takeover in late March, complaint says
- David Sabow, who switched to HSBC from SVB, is identified in the complaint as ‘the chief architect of this scheme’
Two weeks after First Citizens acquired SVB on March 27, HSBC poached 42 bankers on Easter Sunday and brazenly took and misused SVB’s confidential, proprietary and trade secret information, according to a complaint filed on Monday in federal court in northern California.
David Sabow, who worked in the healthcare and technology banking practice at SVB before jumping to HSBC, is identified in the complaint as “the chief architect of this scheme”, which aimed to plunder what was thought to be the “core of SVB’s profitability engine”, according to the complaint.
Sabow helped to identify six core US leaders to hire, along with 35 additional SVB professionals, according to the complaint.
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HSBC spokesman Matt Ward declined to comment.
Unbeknown to First Citizens, Sabow became an executive of HSBC within days of the British bank’s March 13 acquisition of SVB’s UK unit, according to the complaint, which says he and his new employer immediately engineered a plan to take SVB’s data about clients and competitors, including detailed information about its life sciences and technology division.
