Dive Brief:

• SVB Financial Group, the parent of Silicon Valley Bank, has acquired MoffettNathanson, a research firm that covers the media, communications and technology sectors, the company announced Monday. Financial terms of the deal, which closed Friday, were not made public.
• The deal creates a bookend for SVB’s mergers and acquisitions in 2021. The company began the year by bolstering its wealth-management presence. It agreed to buy Boston Private Financial Holdings in January for approximately $900 million in cash and stock.
• "The addition of  technology equity research is another important step in further solidifying our place as the essential partner to innovation economy clients," Greg Becker, SVB Financial’s CEO, said in a press release.

Dive Insight:

The MoffettNathanson deal furthers SVB’s push into research coverage of tech and healthcare, according to Monday’s press release, and caps several months of growth for the company’s investment banking arm, SVB Leerink. SVB in September established an investment-banking team focused on mergers and acquisitions, leveraged finance and capital raises for tech firms, then added six hires to that team last week.

MoffettNathanson’s 23 employees will all join SVB Leerink, an SVB Financial spokesperson told American Banker on Monday.

"SVB’s deep relationships with the world’s leading innovators will not only bring our clients unique opportunities to participate in the value creation cycle of earlier-stage growth companies, they will also provide our analysts with unique insights into the competitive forces that will shape the destinies of the largest companies in our coverage universe," said Craig Moffett, a founding partner of MoffettNathanson.

If the deal gives SVB a bump in the healthcare sector, the Santa Clara, California-based company would be just the latest of many financial firms to make inroads there this year. 

Capital One in October announced plans to purchase Minneapolis-based healthcare investment bank TripleTree. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank in June moved to buy Provide, a digital platform for healthcare practices. Its cross-Ohio rival, Cleveland-based KeyBank, launched the digital bank Laurel Road for Doctors in March. And JPMorgan Chase said in May it would debut Morgan Health to boost the quality of medical care for the bank's employees and to improve health equity and medical cost control.

SVB Financial told analysts in October its expansion into technology investment banking should bolster revenue by $150 million to $200 million in 2022, according to American Banker.

SVB first broached investment banking in 2019 by acquiring Leerink Holdings, the parent firm of Boston-based investment bank Leerink Partners.

About 50 of SVB Leerink’s 350 employees are technology investment bankers, the SVB Financial spokesperson said.