Greensill Capital
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Greensill Capital, founded in London in 2011 by Australian banker Lex Greensill, was a financial services company whose main business was supply chain finance and related services. It practiced reverse factoring: advancing payment to suppliers on their invoices at a slight discount on behalf of their customers and recouping the full amount from the customers later. Greensill packaged the loans and sold them to investors such as Credit Suisse's supply chain finance funds, backing them with credit insurance. SoftBank invested about $1.5 billion and the company was once valued at $3.5 billion.
02 / Greensill Capital FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Greensill's model depended on credit insurance and concentrated borrowers. When insurers (Tokio Marine and the Bond & Credit Co.) refused to renew coverage worth over $4.5 billion, investor confidence collapsed. The company also had outsized exposure to Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance steel group, totaling about $5 billion. On March 1, 2021 Credit Suisse froze $10 billion in its supply chain finance funds; on March 3 Germany's BaFin shut Greensill Bank; and on March 8 Greensill Capital filed for insolvency protection in London. SoftBank lost its $1.5 billion investment, Credit Suisse faced about 1.6 billion Swiss francs in losses, and founder Lex Greensill was banned from acting as a company director for nine years in 2026.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings
Greensill Capital filed for insolvency protection on 8 March 2021 after its funding structure unraveled and its German bank was closed by the regulator.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Lex Greensill founded Greensill Capital in London in November 2011 to provide supply chain finance.
- 02
The company grew rapidly with SoftBank's backing of about $1.5 billion and reached a valuation of about $3.5 billion.
- 03
In mid-2020 Tokio Marine withdrew its credit insurance coverage for Greensill's products.
- 04
On March 1, 2021 Credit Suisse froze $10 billion in its supply chain finance funds linked to Greensill.
- 05
On March 3, 2021 Germany's BaFin closed Greensill Bank in Bremen.
- 06
On March 8, 2021 Greensill Capital filed for insolvency protection in London.