The new owner of Silicon Valley Bank is suing HSBC and several former employees for more than $1bn, claiming the group “engineered a scheme to plunder” SVB of top bankers and confidential information.

First Citizens, which bought SVB after its dramatic failure, claims in the lawsuit that HSBC and a former senior SVB banker co-ordinated the scheme, dubbed “Project Colony”, to strip the “core of [SVB’s] profitability engine”.

SVB collapsed in early March after haemorrhaging tens of billions of dollars in deposits from venture capital investors and start-ups who were spooked by losses in its securities portfolio. The bank’s failure in the US also toppled its UK affiliate, and days later HSBC had agreed to buy the failed UK entity from the Bank of England for a nominal price of ￡1.