Specialty finance firm Greensill Capital headed toward a rapid unraveling after Credit Suisse Group AG CS, +1.73% suspended $10 billion of investment funds that fueled the SoftBank Group Corp 9984, -0.53%. -backed startup.
With a key source of financing frozen, Greensill has appointed Grant Thornton to guide it through a possible restructuring, and it could file for insolvency, the U.K. equivalent of bankruptcy, within days, according to people familiar with the company.
Greensill is simultaneously in talks with private-equity giant Apollo Global Management Inc. to sell its operating business for around $100 million, according to people familiar with the talks. Though a deal wouldn’t be for all of Greensill’s assets, the amount represents a sliver of its peak valuation of $4 billion.
U.K.-based Greensill is the brainchild of former Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley financier Lex Greensill. Founded in 2011, Greensill specializes in an area known as supply-chain finance, a form of short-term cash advance that lets companies stretch out the time they have to pay their bills.
