Collapse is latest blow for British tech queen

THE so-called queen of tech has suffered another blow with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Vin Murria is a board member of the collapsed bank’s UK arm, which over the years has backed well-known start-ups such as Secret Escapes and Trustpilot.

Last year she failed in her bid to buy M&C Saatchi and lost her job as deputy chairman of the advertising agency amid the takeover battle. Murria

( pictured) is best known for her time at software firm Advanced Computer Software Group, which was sold in 2014 for £750m, making her and the company’s investors a fortune. But SVB’s failure is yet another hit to her reputation. Fears are now also mounting over what the bank’s demise means for British companies which it backed.

Over the years it has invested in a number of firms including pensions platform PensionBee and money transfer group Wise.

But a spokesman for PensionBee yesterday said its relationship with SVB was minimal. A spokesman for Wise, the foreign exchange app firm, said: ‘We have minimal exposure to SVB via a credit facility they are part of together with six other major banks, and a small cash balance in an operational corporate account.’

SVB UK reassured investors, stating it was a stand-alone entity with a separate balance sheet and governance structure.