HSBC, the new owner of Silicon Valley Bank UK, has approved millions of pounds in employee bonuses just days after the bank was rescued from insolvency by the Bank of England.

The payouts include bonuses for senior executives and were described by insiders as "modest" with a total between £15m and £20m. It remains unclear how much of the bonus pool was awarded to Erin Platts, the UK bank's CEO, or her senior colleagues. The bonuses were approved by HSBC in a bid to retain key staff and to signal confidence in the talent base at its new subsidiary.

SVB UK employs around 700 people in the UK and is a profitable business, but was brought to the brink of collapse by the troubles of its American parent company. If the bank had not been acquired solvently, the bonuses would not have been paid, according to insiders. Silicon Valley Bank's banking arm in the US has been taken into government ownership, and its holding company, SVB Financial Group, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks buyers for its other assets.

HSBC, Europe's biggest lender, agreed to buy SVB UK for £1 in a deal that was struck before the markets opened in London on Monday. The bank was given a waiver from bank ring-fencing rules introduced after the 2008 financial crisis. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said the rescue had been critical to preserving funding for some of the UK's most promising start-up companies. The UK tech sector is a world leader and is of huge importance to the British economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs. The government had been lobbied intensively by hundreds of tech entrepreneurs about the parlous state of SVB UK, warning of "an existential threat to the UK tech sector" and that the collapse of SVB UK would "cripple the sector and set the ecosystem back 20 years."

Ms Platts, who has worked for SVB UK since 2007, is set to remain in her job following talks with Ian Stuart, the HSBC UK chief executive. Photo by Coolcaesar, Wikimedia commons.