Bloomberg
Greensill Loses More Executives Amid Survival Fight
(Bloomberg) — Three more directors of Greensill Capital have resigned as the trade-finance company faces a fight for survival following the flight of its top backers.Chairman Maurice Thompson resigned alongside former MSCI Inc. Chief Operating Officer David Brierwood and Patrick Allin, according to company filings seen by Bloomberg. They join four other board members who have stepped down recently, among them the brother of founder Lex Greensill.Read more: Greensill’s Overnight Downfall Was Many Months in MakingA spokesperson for Greensill declined to comment. News of the departures was first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.Greensill’s trade finance firm is teetering on the brink of insolvency after investors cut ties with him and the German regulator froze his bank in the country. The fall from grace has been swift for a now ex-billionaire with access to U.K. political circles and the counsel of former Prime Minister David Cameron.Read more: Greensill’s Top Client, Gupta Sees Key Cash Source EvaporateGreensill Capital is in talks for Athene Holding Ltd. to buy its operating company and continue to provide billions of dollars of funding to Greensill customers, according to people familiar with the matter. Assets linked to U.K. steel investor Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance have been excluded from the deal discussions, Bloomberg News reported on March 4.The European Central Bank is asking lenders in the region about any loans they have related to Greensill, according to a person familiar with the matter. The move is standard procedure and doesn’t reflect heightened concern at the watchdog, the Financial Times reported earlier. The ECB declined to comment.Greensill’s efforts to disrupt a niche part of global finance were derailed when credit insurance backing some of his firm’s loans lapsed, eventually forcing Credit Suisse Group AG to freeze a $10 billion group of client funds that bought the debt. The Swiss bank said on Friday it will close the funds down.Greensill’s supply chain finance firm relied on those funds as buyers of the debt securities it issues. The company is also facing a criminal probe of its German banking subsidiary after regulator BaFin found that Greensill Bank AG had improperly accounted for assets of its biggest customer, GFG Alliance.Greensill has said that it received “extensive advice,” from law firms in the U.K. and Germany, “which informed the way in which the assets were classified.” The company immediately complied after BaFin advised it late last year and early this year that it didn’t agree with its accounting, according to Greensill.(Corrects to show Brierwood is former COO in second paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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