British multinational universal bank and financial services holding company HSBC Holdings plc has acquired Silicon Valley Bank U.K subsidiary for £1 ($1.21).

HSBC disclosed that the acquisition will help strengthen its franchise in the U.K, noting that all depositors’ money with SVBUK is safe and secure and that all operations will continue as normal.

The company said in a statement, “This action has been taken to stabilize Silicon Valley Bank UK, ensuring the continuity of banking services, minimizing disruption to the UK technology sector, and supporting confidence in the financial system.

“The bank and HM treasury can confirm that all depositor’s money with SVB UK is safe and secure as a result of this transaction. SVB UK’s business will continue to be operated normally by SVB UK. All services will continue to operate as normal, and customers should not notice any changes”.

HSBC’s acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank British arm is coming after a host of potential buyers had submitted proposals to purchase the bank since the failure of its U.S. parent company, amid widespread concern over the immediate future of many British technology and life sciences startups.

Bank of London CEO Anthony Watson disclosed that Silicon Valley Bank cannot be allowed to fail, given the vital role it plays in the community. He added, “this is a unique opportunity to ensure the U.K has a more diversified banking sector, whilst allowing continuity of service to SVB’s U.K client base. It would be deeply disappointing for this moment to lead to further consolidation of power among big banks”.

The acquisition of SVB U.K. subsidiary comes after the bank which specialized in lending funds to technology startups, witnessed a financial implosion on Friday last week, making it the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, Investors King understands.

Silicon Valley Bank’s financial implosion began late Wednesday when it informed investors with the unpleasant news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. This spurred customers to withdraw a staggering $42 billion of deposits by the end of Thursday, leading to the collapse of the bank.

Analysts predict that the slump of Silicon Valley Bank could be far-reaching which would see Startups faced with several challenges such as paying employees’ salaries, venture investors struggling to raise funds, massive cost cuts, etc.

A startup that trains developers in Africa and hires them out to global tech companies Andela, has recently acquired a tech skills assessment platform Qualified to accelerate its ability to source and assess talent.

The acquisition of qualified will see Andela’s global tech community expand with the addition of more than 3.5 million engineers via Codewars, an online educational community for computer programming powered by Qualified.

Speaking on the recent acquisition of Qualified, Co-founder of Andela Jeremy Johnson said,

“This acquisition will help Andela expand and accelerates its ability to source and expertly assess talent. Labor marketplaces are constrained by inefficiencies between supply, demand, and quality. Qualified allows us to address those inefficiencies by providing the certified right talent at the right time. Companies will continue to trust that talent sourced through Andela has the needed skills regardless of where they live and work.”

Also speaking on its collaboration with Andela, the Co-founder, and CEO of Qualified Jake Hoffner said, “The tech industry has historically relied on hiring practices that have proven to be ineffective. The expanded platform will allow companies to create hiring processes for software engineers that are predictive of their on-the-job performance. In addition, we provide companies and our growing tech community a bigger, broader, and better opportunity to connect globally.”

Founded nearly a decade ago on the premise that brilliance is evenly distributed but opportunity is not, Andela’s recent acquisition of Qualified, has considerably accelerated the road ahead to ensure that the right tech talents are connected to the right opportunities.

With the biggest challenge hiring managers face in determining how can they know a new hire will succeed, Qualified, as the top technical assessment platform, will accelerate Andela’s ability to solve this problem and thereby raise the probability of success for a new hire by certifying their skills before the engagement begins.

It is interesting to note that Qualified is a leader in this space, enterprise companies like Meta, Zoom, and Dominos already trust them to assess their internal talent.

Investors King understands that Andela is keenly aware of the role AI will play with its recent acquisition, and it believes that the capabilities of Qualified would move it towards a more predictive matching process on its platform.

Andela’s procurement of Qualified will now not only provides access to global talent but raise and standardize the bar at which those engineers are certified. It is interesting to note that in 2017, Qualified and Andela first joined forces to build up Africa’s tech ecosystem. Using Qualified’s developer assessments, Andela successfully assessed over 19k developers.

According to recent reports, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk is currently monitoring Manchester United’s sale and could make a move to buy the club.

Reports suggest that Musk who is an ardent supporter of Manchester United doesn’t want to miss out on a potential opportunity to invest in one of the biggest football clubs in the world.

Musk last year tweeted about his interest in purchasing the club when it was faced with a crisis until he later debunked the news stating that it was a joke.

Still, even after dismissing the prospect of riding in to save United, Musk has left the possibility dangling that he might make a bid for the Old Trafford boardroom one day by revealing his childhood fandom of the club.

The English Premier League club has been put up for full sale after American family (Glazers), are reportedly ready to sell their full stake in the club amid sustained fan discontent.

The Glazers asking price is understood to be around the £8 billion ($9.8 billion) mark and have set a soft deadline for prospective bids to be made latest this Friday.

English billionaire and Chief Executive Officer of INEOS chemicals group Sir James Arthur Ratcliffe is reportedly the only person to publicly declare interest in buying the club.

Ratcliffe is reported to have supported united as a boy and is understood to remain a fan, hence making it no secret that he would be interested in buying the Old Trafford club.

It is interesting to note that he was among bidders for Chelsea football club when the former owner Roman Abramovich put it up for sale following controversies during the Russian-Ukraine war, but his offer of £4.25bn was rejected.

Also, there have been other expressions of interest, from several U.S investors, and Qatar-based groups, with Saudi and other money from the Middle East, understood to be focused on the club.

Investors King understands that Manchester United was put up for sale last year when the Glazers, who have been at the helm of affairs for 17 years, ordered a strategic review.

Their tenure proved controversial with fans from the off because of the level of debt they placed on the club’s books, a burden which many argue has hampered investment in the team, stadium, and wider facilities ever since.

It was reported that the sale of Manchester United was necessitated after the club’s icon and five times Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo called out the owners on the poor management of the club facilities amid other things.

Ronaldo in an interview with British veteran journalist, Piers Morgan called out the owners over poor handling which he believes had a negative impact on the club’s performance.

He said “The Glazers, they don’t care about the club. I mean, professional sport, as you know, Manchester is a marketing club.”