During the final day of August this year, SPD Silicon Valley said that it would become a wholly owned unit of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, under the name Shanghai Innovation Bank. Why do I care? Isn't this just a name change on the other side of the world from me? Well, it IS that. But it has some symbolic significance. SPD Silicon Valley began life as a joint venture of Shanghai Pudong Development [SPD] on the one hand and the important northern California financial institution, Silicon Valley Bank, on the other. Silicon Valley Bank was what one would imagine it was from the name: it was for years a bank important to the venture capital and high-tech entrepreneurial world in the Bay Area. It arranged an alliance with SPDB in order to try to make itself a player of global reach, not merely an important regional institution. The creation of their joint venture, SPD Silicon Valley, was an expression of that alliance. In March of 2023, Silicon Valley ...