THEex Greensill loves to tell his story. He regularly brags about how he went from a watermelon, sugarcane and sweet potato farmer in North Queensland to a billionaire banker flying around the world on a private jet employing some of the most powerful former politicians. of the world, including the former British Prime Minister. David Cameron and former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
He refuses to talk about his current situation, however, because Greensill Capital, the controversial bank he founded in 2011 with his farmer brother Peter, is on the brink of collapse.
The predominantly London-based bank – which he had hoped last year to go public with a Valuation of $ 7 billion (£ 5.8 billion) – is preparing to file for bankruptcy in the UK. Its remaining viable assets are expected to be salvaged from the collapse by US private equity firm Apollo Global Management for just $ 100 million.
Shareholders including the Greensill brothers and Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, whose investment fund SoftBank had injected $ 1.5 billion into the company, will likely be wiped out.
It’s a sudden downfall for Greensill, who has been lauded by Cameron for revolutionizing small business finance and bringing into the heart of the government tasked with performing the same magic for public finances.
Greensill reportedly had an office at No.10 where he worked as the “Crown Representative” to the government on supply chain finance, and was awarded a CBE for services to the economy on occasion. of the Queen’s birthday in 2017.
The government’s ‘supply chain finance’ initiative, devised by Greensill and promoted by Cameron, seemed to work at the time and was used by the NHS to supply thousands of chemists. However, an investigation by MPs in the collapse of the government outsourcing company Carillion found that the program allowed it to “strengthen its failed business model”, leading to even more job losses.
After leaving office, Cameron was hired as Greensill’s senior advisor and flew around the world to promote the company. In December 2019, Cameron said: “From its British foundations, Greensill has taken the world by storm, disrupting traditional financing models and democratizing capital to give businesses, including many SMEs and small traders, access to low-cost finance. “
Bishop also joined as an advisor. She said the bank has “great potential to transform relationships across the world’s complex supply chains.” Greensill also claims to have advised the White House on supply chain finance.
Greensill says his idea for supply chain finance – in which companies borrow money to pay their bills while waiting to be paid by their customers (and his bank takes a share) – came to him one day while working on the family farm in Bundaberg, north Brisbane.
“My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college because we had to wait a long time for the big retailers to pay us,” he said. told the Sunday Times in an interview at his office overlooking the Savoy Hotel in London. “It got me very early on to focus on how this might be resolved.”
Prior to founding Greensill, he worked in supply chain finance at global banks Morgan Stanley and Citibank, where his extravagance is remembered. In one incident, he allegedly submitted a claim for reimbursement for new clothes of around £ 4,000 after being stranded in Copenhagen overnight due to a canceled flight.
Greensill says his bank’s driving mission is to help small businesses. Its customers, however, include large companies: Vodafone, the Very distribution group, owned by billionaire brothers Barclay, and the “savior of steel” Sanjeev Gupta, from which Liberty Group bought ailing British steel companies.
A spokesperson for the Community Steel Union said, “There is no doubt that these reports are of concern and, on behalf of our members, we are asking the company for answers. Liberty Steel UK is a crucial strategic business and we are ready to work with the business and the government to secure the business and protect jobs.
Greensill is still regularly seen at Whitehall – transparency files show the The company held six meetings with the Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury last year, before Greensill was accredited as a lender under the coronavirus business disruption loan program. A Treasury spokesperson said: “Treasury officials regularly meet with a range of stakeholders to discuss our economic response to the Covid pandemic. “
