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DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes, that's right. So many of these supply chain finance assets, the biggest insurers in particular, the pension funds and so on, they can't invest in them because they're not investment grade. And so the way you make the investment grade is you take out trade credit insurance, and that makes them investable for a much broader group of investors. The trouble for Lex was a lot of the big trade credit insurers wouldn't work with him. They met him over the years, and they dealt with them over the years and found they didn't like the way we did business. DUNCAN MAVIN: That's a great question. So I -- yes, you're right, I've been following this for probably about 4 years now, maybe a little longer than that. And at the time -- I've been a financial journalist for a long time. I was a chartered accountant before that. So just so you know where I'm coming from. But at the time, I wasn't writing an awful lot. I was doing a bit more editing and managing people. And a source -- a longtime source of mine came to me and said, hey, are you paying attention to this company called Greensill Capital? And I said, no, never heard of them. If we can pull off [a public listing]”, Lex Greensill says in early 2020, “me and my brother will be the richest men in Australia”; just over a year later, he tells one of his major shareholders, “It’s over... I’m ashamed for what I’ve done to my family name”. As ever, the dream dies gradually, then suddenly. Pyramid of Lies charts the meteoric rise and spectacular downfall of Greensill and his company. He had a simple idea—democratising supply chain finance—and disrupted a trillion dollar industry in the process. But a staid business model concealed dubious practices as Greensill made increasingly risky loans to fraudulent companies using other people’s money.
Greensill found it difficult to make any money doing it, and so started to finance riskier borrowers, taking out credit insurance to obviate the higher risk of default. The insurance allowed the loans to be marketed, misleadingly, as low-risk to investors. DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes. I mean I think that's also another really important point. And I think it's always very tempting with these kind of white collar scandals to think that there are no victims, but there are victims here, not least the 1,000 or so Greensill employees who lost their jobs. So Credit Suisse's role was to provide the funding for these supply chain finance transactions and other loans, although they might argue they didn't know that's what was happening.An epic true story of ambition, greed and hubris – the collapse of Greensill Capital is a billion pound scandal that shredded the reputation of a British Prime Minister. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea – democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it’s mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people’s money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. Lex, he had a small bank in Germany, but he wasn't a bank. He needed to find funding from somewhere to pay for these supply chain finance transactions. And so he was looking for investors for that. And Credit Suisse came along and became the biggest investor in those funds. So Lex had sort of latched on to them around 2017, found a couple of portfolio managers, persuaded them that supply chain finance was a great asset class. It paid a little bit more yield than money market funds, but done properly, it could be just as safe or just a little bit riskier. NATHAN HUNT: Duncan, you've been following the Greensill story for years. I'm wondering how early did you know that this story wasn't going to end well? It doesn't take long to read and it's a pity that he didn't do a better job of telling the story but more than likely there would have been a rush to get something to print.
Greensill achieved its rapid growth by becoming, in effect, a lender of last resort. A handful of risky borrowers came to dominate its business, the largest of which was Sanjeev Gupta’s steel group, to which Greensill kept lending long past the point where it was obvious there was no ability to repay. As time went on, more and more loans started to go sour, and the insurers started to pull out. The business finally collapsed when the new Japanese owners of its last insurer (a small, bamboozled Australian outfit) called time.
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And for a form of Prime Minister who really only has his reputation to sell his credibility and his reputation to have put it all on this company, which was already showing some serious red flags, that was a really strange move.
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