The parent company and top executives of Silicon Valley Bank have been sued by shareholders of the collapsed lender, which has caused global market turmoil.

More than $465bn has been wiped off global financial stocks over the last two days amid a crisis in confidence in the banking sector.

5 things to start your day 

1) Boost for pensions as Hunt ready to raise cap | New threshold may be over £1.5m in order to tackle rising trend of early retirement

2) How ‘Project Yeti’ rescued UK tech from a Monday morning bloodbath | Plus: Inside the weekend from hell for start-up Britain

3) Banking stocks plummet on fears of SVB contagion | Newly launched Federal Reserve lending programmes fail to calm markets

4) HSBC to inject £2bn into collapsed UK tech bank | Move eases fears that the crisis could severely impact the British tech sector

5) GCHQ warns that ChatGPT and rival chatbots are a security threat | Concerns centre on the possibility that sensitive search queries could be revealed

What happened overnight 

Asian shares declined on Tuesday while bonds rallied in early trading as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continued to reverberate across global markets.

In Asia, direct exposure to the risks from the US failures seemed slim so far. Still, fears of contagion persisted, sending regional benchmarks lower across the region.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 dropped nearly 2pc to 27,286.87, extending losses from the day before. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 1.6pc to 6,992.00. 

South Korea's Kospi lost 1.9pc to 2,365.18 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.2pc to 19,462.84. The Shanghai Composite declined 0.7pc to 3,245.13.

Policy-sensitive two-year government bond yields tumbled around 20 basis points in New Zealand, as did the rate on Australia’s three-year maturity. 

Wall Street's three main indexes delivered a mixed performance after President Joe Biden's response to the collapse of SVB failed to reassure markets. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 90.5 points or 0.28pc to 31,819.14.

The S&P 500 shed 5.83 points or 0.15pc to 3,855.76, after a rout in bank shares saw the broad-based index seesaw between gains and losses. The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite added 49.96 points or 0.45pc to 11,188.84.

Short term Treasury yields plunged and pushed prices higher, as traders lowered their expectations of the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates next week.

The yield on the two-year note dipped by more than half a percentage point, marking the largest three-day retreat since Black Monday in 1987. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury declined 17 basis points to 3.53pc.