What distinguishes the Greensill saga from other corporate scandals such as the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s or Robert Maxwell's misappropriation of pension funds is the way in which it encompasses, and taints, figures from the highest levels of politics and officialdom, most notably David Cameron and the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood. 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.

And in that case, there's a few million dollars of maybe somebody who has got a little bit more than that has been poured into these funds, which have been sold as ultrasafe, but in fact, they aren't really. They're full of risky loans. And so Credit Suisse played a really important role in fueling Greensill Capital growth, but also spreading the risk to people who didn't understand what they were getting into. The Pyramid of Lies is not elegantly written. The breathless tone of some descriptions verges on comical: the Savoy, where Greensill holds a breakfast meeting, is “a 130-year-old art deco masterpiece, dubbed London’s 'most famous hotel’ and renowned as a favoured haunt of kings and presidents, Hollywood stars and fashionistas”. It is nonetheless worth reading as a meticulously researched and enjoyably lively account of this major financial scandal. And so they're kind of leaning on each other. And if you take one -- takes the other away, then it all collapses. At Greensill Capital, absolutely Lex and the other executives know that this is a problem. They discuss it all the time in management meetings, how are they going to kind of get out of this problem. Lex being the optimist at all these management meetings will say, leave it to me, I've got it sorted, we'll outgrow this. Of course, they couldn't.And he was clearly really, really ambitious. In his retelling later, and he told this story many, many times, what motivated him to get into supply chain finance. This is his version of events, was watching his parents struggle to get paid on time. So producing their agricultural produce and selling it to supermarkets who then failed to pay until 3 months later or 9 months later or [ over ] a long end. And that sort of left his parents short for a while. And so that in his retelling was that motivated him to say, I'm going to do this in a little guy. I'm going to sort this problem out.

Modern corruption is a refined process for sophisticated people. Urbane actors enter the political equivalent of a “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) agreement. Politicians or civil servants grant a shady financial institution or incompetent arms manufacturer access to decision-making and public money. No agreement needs to have been reached. No wads of cash change hands. But after the civil servant retires or politician leaves parliament, he can expect an immensely rewarding job. The sole benefit of the multibillion collapse of Greensill Capital in 2021 was that it illuminated BNPL politics as no other scandal has. 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. 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.It was not just the Cameron government. Credit Suisse and SoftBank fell for the patter and piled in billions. See also: Inside Jason Miller’s plan to turn the Big Lie into a big business – and a second term for Trump] 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.

PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Pyramid_of_Lies_-_Duncan_Mavin.pdf, The_Pyramid_of_Lies_-_Duncan_Mavin.epub So the biggest trade credit insurers said, no, we're not going to work with you. That left him with a bit of a problem, which he solves by going to a very small Australian insurer called The Bond & Credit Co. And The Bond & Credit Co. ended up providing billions and billions of dollars of insurance to the Greensill business. And it was startling to me, looking at it as a journalist to say, this can't be right, how can this tiny company be so critical in these billions of dollars worth of funds. And Lex, like some of the others in Silicon Valley, he was very keen to be seen as a visionary, very keen to sort of align himself with very important global politicians and financiers and so on because he knew that there was a lot of value in doing that. And I think if you look at what he claimed with the Obama White House, it was -- that was part for him of saying, look, I'm a really big, important powerful player. I mean in the end, right, like Lex Greensill's company was valued at several billion dollars. And part of the reason for that was because he was making these outlandish claims. And it's a question I took to Credit Suisse, and I took to SoftBank as a journalist many times. It was so startlingly problematic. In the end, The Bond & Credit Co. was taken over by a company -- Japanese insurer, Tokio Marine. And when Tokio Marine got involved, they looked at The Bond & Credit Co's exposure to Greensill and the Green -- the funds that were investing in Greensill assets. And they said, hey, this is too much. We don't want to do this anymore. And that really spelled the end, right, because without that insurance, the funds that have invested in Greensill's assets, they're no longer able to go out to the same pool of investors. To its founder, Greensill Capital is more than a business: his whole new identity depends upon it. As the story unfolds, we see his drive and determination evolve fatally into messianic ambition and a blinkered disregard for differing views.NATHAN HUNT: Sadly, the losers from Greensill's collapse extend beyond just a few venture capitalists and private equity investors. What was Credit Suisse's role in spreading the exposure to Greensill?