Latin American tech startups scramble after SVB collapse

father is unaccounted for and possibly dead, so he has been in Waheed’s custody as they are both in the same prison.

The boy, who was born in Iraq, is one of the deceased woman’s children in Waheed’s care. Waheed has two children of her own, one of them born in T&T and the other in Iraq.

Guardian Media has been reliably informed that travel documents have already been requested by Iraqi officials for Waheed and the children to be deported to T&T through the UK.

In Iraq, there are reportedly four Trini women and seven children, three born in Trinidad and four in Iraq. (Excerpt from Trinidad Guardian)

Tech startups in Latin America are struggling to find banking alternatives after the sudden crash of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), one of the few banks that offered much-needed dollar accounts and catered to the specific needs of the sector.

"This touched (almost all) venture-backed companies in Latin America," said Brian Requarth, the Mexico City-based co-founder of startup platform Latitud.

Local startups now have few alternatives for a banking partner in the wake of SVB's collapse, Requarth said. Over the weekend, US regulators announced an emergency plan allowing depositors of Santa Clara, California-based SVB to access their funds.

In 2022, more than 1300 startups in Latin America raked in an estimated US$28.17 billion in funding, according to the Association for Private

Capital Investment in Latin America.

Vicente Garrido, the co-founder of Mexican rental property startup Roddo, told Reuters he still was not sure whether the company would make payroll this week.

"We had all of our capital there, in the US," Garrido said. "In Mexico, we held just a fifth of what we spend in a month."

Startups in the region often relied on SVB as one of the few banks that offered them US dollar accounts, a requirement from venture firms providing capital in greenbacks.

Startups would open SVB accounts using what Requarth called a "Cayman sandwich", using holding companies in the Cayman Islands and limited liability companies (LLCs) in the US state of Delaware to avoid a taxation double whammy if the firm was ever sold.

(Excerpt from Reuters)