Who directed Greensill Capital (UK) Limited, 2012–2026

analysisCompanies House records 20 officers of Greensill Capital (UK) Limited (GCUK), directors and company secretaries together, and 20 resignations, so no director or secretary is shown as currently in office. Alexander David Greensill (Lex Greensill) was a director throughout, from 2 July 2012 to 17 June 2026; the High Court in [2026] EWHC 639 (Ch) and the Insolvency Service in its announcement of 4 June 2026 both state that Lex Greensill was a director of GCUK, of Greensill Limited and of the Australian parent company, Greensill Capital Pty Limited. The first board, appointed on 2 July 2012, also included Peter Edward Greensill, a director until 22 January 2018, whose officer record lists three appointments, all in Greensill group companies, and Jason Richard Alexander Austin, a director until 21 June 2019 and the company secretary until 16 September 2015. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisFive more directors joined between 2014 and 2016: Maurice Nicholas Beech Thompson on 25 September 2014, David Campbell Brierwood on 1 January 2015, William Roland Hartley-Urquhart on 20 May 2015 (whose officer record shows no other appointment), Patrick Joseph Allin on 8 February 2016 and William Crothers on 1 August 2016. The directors' report in the 2017 annual report lists Alexander Greensill, Peter Greensill, Jason Austin, Maurice Thompson, Roland Hartley-Urquhart, David Brierwood, Patrick Allin and William Crothers as directors during the year and up to signature, and records that Peter Greensill, Maurice Thompson, Roland Hartley-Urquhart, David Brierwood and Patrick Allin resigned on 22 January 2018; Companies House gives the same end date for the four directors who had joined from 2014. That left Lex Greensill, Jason Austin and William Crothers on the board; William Crothers remained a director until 4 February 2021. ^{1 5 6}

analysisJonathan Edward Myott Lane became company secretary on 16 September 2015 and held the post until 30 June 2020; Jonathan Lane was also a director from 14 December 2018 to 24 July 2019. Christopher William Bates was a director for less than a month, from 14 December 2018 to 9 January 2019. On 19 February 2019 Alastair Kenneth Eadie and Bartholomeus Gerardus Joannes Ras became directors, both serving until 12 February 2021, and Rachel Justine Donnelly was appointed company secretary, a post held until 11 December 2019. The officer records of Bartholomeus Ras and Rachel Donnelly show no other appointment. ^{1 7 8}

analysisNeil Albert Garrod and Sean Denis Robson-Hanafin became directors on 24 July 2019; Neil Garrod served until 12 February 2021, and Companies House gives 20 December 2020 as the end of Sean Robson-Hanafin's directorship. Hayley Louise James was company secretary from 30 June 2020 to 21 October 2021. Divya Sara Eapen was a director from 13 July 2020 to 12 February 2021, and Bradley Jay Gans, whose officer record shows no other appointment, from 15 December 2020 to 28 December 2020. ^{1 9 10}

analysisThe 2019 annual report of GCUK names Alexander Greensill, William Crothers, Alastair Eadie, Bartholomeus Ras, Neil Garrod and Sean Robson-Hanafin as its directors and Jonathan Lane as company secretary. Most of these directorships ended in the weeks before the administration, although the terminations were filed only on 16 March 2021, after it had begun: William Crothers's with effect from 4 February 2021, and those of Sean Robson-Hanafin, Bartholomeus Ras, Neil Garrod, Divya Eapen and Alastair Eadie with effect from 12 February 2021. A second-filed form for Sean Robson-Hanafin was registered on 26 March 2024, and the officer list now gives 20 December 2020 as the end of that directorship. An internal SoftBank email of 4 February 2021, quoted in the High Court judgment [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch), stated that SBIA, the manager of the SoftBank Vision Funds, had just been informed that "the chairman, head of BoD risk committee and head of BoD audit committee have resigned", that this was not public, and that, given SoftBank Group's stance and this development, SBIA had paused the proposed transaction concerning Greensill. The email, written by an SBIA managing partner, names neither the people nor the Greensill company whose board was meant, and the court made no finding about the resignations. ^{11 12 13 1 14}

analysisWhen the High Court (Mr Justice Michael Green, [2021] EWHC 700 (Ch)) made the administration orders on 8 March 2021, the application for GCUK was made by its sole director, Alexander David Greensill, and that for Greensill Capital Management Company (UK) Limited (GCMC) by Alexander David Greensill and Alastair Kenneth Eadie. The court recorded that Credit Suisse and the Peter Greensill Family Trust, notified as lenders, consented to the orders, that the Bank of England did not intend to exercise its powers and that Credit Suisse Asset Management, appearing for the noteholders, did not oppose them. The judgment was issued under GCMC's case number, CR-2021-000436, while GCUK's own administration is registered as High Court case 000435 of 2021. On 4 September 2026 the High Court extended both administrations to 7 September 2028; the administrators intend to end them by conversion to creditors' voluntary liquidations. ^{15 16 17}

analysisGCUK's 2019 annual report sets out its directors' roles in the wider group. It describes Lex (Alexander) Greensill as co-founder and CEO of the Greensill Group, who before starting Greensill was Managing Director and Head of Supply Chain Finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citibank and established Morgan Stanley's global supply chain finance business; the report also states that Lex Greensill is a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales and of the Supreme Court of Queensland and was awarded the CBE for services to the UK economy in 2017. The Financial Conduct Authority likewise referred to Lex Greensill as CEO of Greensill in a letter of 4 May 2021 to Mel Stride MP, reporting two formal meetings between FCA staff and Lex Greensill: on 12 September 2019, a discussion of Greensill's activities in the UK held at Greensill's request, and on 9 December 2020, as part of the evidence gathering for the Woolard Review into the future of unsecured credit. ^{1 2}

analysisThe same report describes William (Bill) Crothers as Vice Chairman Public Sector and a member of the Group Audit Committee, who was a senior civil servant for eight years, most recently the UK Government's Chief Commercial Officer, founded and chaired the Crown Commercial Service as its first executive chairman, and earlier spent 21 years at Accenture. Neil Garrod was the Greensill Group's Chief Financial Officer, having previously spent 18 years at Vodafone, 10 of them as Global Group Treasurer. Sean Robson-Hanafin was President of the Greensill Group, previously Head of Corporate Banking for UK and Europe at Standard Chartered, with 14 years at Citigroup as a Managing Director and service as a Senior Advisor to the UK Government's Cabinet Office on capital markets and corporate finance. ¹

analysisAlastair (Al) Eadie is described as Group Finance Director, with over 30 years' experience in roles at MSCI, Aviva, UBS, EY and Accenture, and as a fellow chartered accountant and qualified treasurer. Bartholomeus (Bart) Ras was UK Managing Director of the Greensill Group and Global Head of its Innovation and Incubator team, having earlier been CFO of Philips Supply Management and Purchasing, EMEA Head of Supply Chain Finance at Citi and Global Head of Business Development for HSBC Global Trade and Receivable Finance. Two other officers' group roles appear in the High Court's judgment in [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch). It describes Divya Eapen as the Chief Risk Officer of the Greensill Group at the time of a video meeting on 27 January 2021 with the Chief Risk Officer of SBIA, the manager of the SoftBank Vision Funds, and Jonathan Lane as the group's senior internal lawyer, recording that on 14 October 2020 Lex Greensill forwarded internally to Jonathan Lane, among others, the proposal under which SoftBank Group would buy the outstanding Katerra notes. ^{1 3}

analysisTwo chairman titles appear outside GCUK's register of officers. The Financial Conduct Authority's letter of 4 May 2021 described Maurice Thompson as Chair of Greensill and reported an unplanned meeting with Maurice Thompson in February 2020 at which Greensill's employer salary advance scheme was briefly discussed; the letter does not say which Greensill company Maurice Thompson chaired, and Companies House records Maurice Thompson's directorship of GCUK as having ended on 22 January 2018. A company-data aggregator's executive profile, citing the team page of the Greensill website as captured in 2019, describes John Gorman as a co-founder and "Chairman Emeritus" of Greensill and an entrepreneur in real estate, financial services, manufacturing and agriculture, and attaches the title to GCUK. That description rests only on the aggregator's copy of the former website. John Gorman does not appear among the 20 officers of GCUK in the Companies House register, so the title was not a registered office of that company, and the record does not show which Greensill entity, if any, John Gorman held a position in. ^{2 4 5 6}

analysisMany of GCUK's officers also held office in other Greensill companies. Companies House lists as directors of Greensill Capital Management Company (UK) Limited (GCMC) Alexander David Greensill (19 April 2012 to 17 June 2026), Peter Edward Greensill (19 April 2012 to 24 January 2021), Jason Richard Alexander Austin (19 April 2012 to 21 June 2019) and Alastair Kenneth Eadie (21 June 2019 to 21 April 2021). The joint administrators' proposals list Lex Greensill, Jonathan Lane and Alastair Eadie as GCMC's directors and officers, none of them holding shares, in the administration that began on 8 March 2021 (High Court, 000436 of 2021). The officers of Greensill Limited were Lex Greensill (3 May 2018 to 17 June 2026), Jason Austin (3 May 2018 to 24 June 2019) and Alastair Eadie (24 June 2019 to 2 March 2021) as directors, and Jonathan Lane (3 May 2018 to 23 June 2021) and Hayley Louise James (from 23 June 2021, listed as active) as company secretaries. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6}

analysisLex Greensill was a director of Greensill Capital Trading Limited from 17 October 2014, of Laufer Limited from 17 October 2016 and of Greensill Capital Investments Limited from 21 November 2016, in each case with no resignation recorded before the company was dissolved. Jason Austin was a director of all three from the same dates to 24 June 2019; Peter Greensill was a director of Greensill Capital Trading Limited from 27 November 2014 to 24 January 2021, and Alastair Eadie of Laufer Limited and Greensill Capital Investments Limited from 24 June 2019 to 2 March 2021. Lex Greensill and Alastair Eadie were the directors of Greensill Trading Limited from 22 November 2019, Greensill Trading 2 Limited from 9 December 2019, Greensill Trading 3 Limited from 16 December 2019 and Greensill Trading 4 Limited from 20 December 2019. Alastair Eadie resigned from all four on 2 March 2021, while no resignation is recorded for Lex Greensill before the companies were dissolved; Jonathan Lane was company secretary of Greensill Trading Limited from 22 November 2019 to 23 September 2021. ^{1 3 2 4 7}

analysisThe directors of Earnd (UK) Limited were Neil Garrod (30 October 2019 to 4 March 2021), William Crothers (17 April 2020 to 4 February 2021), Sean Robson-Hanafin (17 April 2020 to 20 December 2020) and Alastair Eadie (17 April 2020 to 4 March 2021), followed by Lex Greensill from 4 March 2021, with no resignation recorded before the company was dissolved. Greensill Global Trading Limited had Alastair Eadie (18 June 2020 to 26 April 2021) and Sean Robson-Hanafin (18 June 2020 to 20 December 2020) as directors and then Lex Greensill from 26 April 2021, again with no resignation recorded before dissolution. At Greensill Capital Securities Limited, Companies House records Lex Greensill as a director from 18 May 2015 to 9 April 2018 and again from 2 December 2019, Wasif Islam Raza from 9 April 2018 to 8 October 2020 and Neil Garrod from 2 December 2019 to 1 April 2022, with Hayley James as company secretary from 25 September 2020 to 29 September 2021. A company-data aggregator's summary of Companies House filings also records Ludwig Clemens Herbert Sels as appointed a director together with Wasif Raza on 9 April 2018, when Lex Greensill ceased to be a director, and as no longer a director from 29 January 2021. No Companies House officer page for Ludwig Sels is in the record and the aggregator's dates may be filing dates rather than effective dates, although Companies House itself confirms that Wasif Raza was appointed and Lex Greensill resigned on 9 April 2018. ^{1 8 9 10 4 11 12 13}

analysisFor the German companies, the management records come from company-data aggregators' summaries of commercial-register publications; the register entries themselves are not in the record, and the dates are those of publication. According to those summaries, Alexander Greensill and Danyon Mayall Lloyd were managing directors of Greensill GmbH from its registration on 28 March 2019; a publication of 16 March 2021 records that Danyon Lloyd was no longer a managing director, and one of 26 May 2023 records the liquidation of the company, Simon Slobbe as liquidator and that Alexander Greensill was no longer a managing director. For Greensill Bank AG (Amtsgericht Bremen, HRB 4088), an aggregator's copy of a register announcement of 5 August 2020 records that Danyon Lloyd and one other member left the bank's management board (Vorstand) and that Ann-Christin Rebekka Rathjen and Ingo Schwartz were entered as management board members, each also holding Prokura (a registered commercial power of attorney). The aggregator copies show the Bremen entry under the name ARIMA Beteiligungs GmbH, a name the record does not explain, and a second aggregator dates the corresponding publication 6 August 2020. ^{1 2 3}

analysisAn aggregator's copy of a register announcement of 26 April 2021 for the same Bremen entry records that Markus Antonius Nünnerich and Ann-Christin Rathjen left the management board of Greensill Bank AG. The same aggregator's profile lists Ann-Christin Rathjen as holder of Prokura at the bank from 14 May 2018 to 4 August 2020 and again from 27 April 2021, and as a management board member from 5 August 2020 to 26 April 2021; the profile lists the periods without labelling each one, and this pairing of periods with roles follows the announcements of 5 August 2020 and 26 April 2021. Other roles at the bank appear in the Commercial Court's judgment [2024] EWHC 3068 (Comm), which considered whether GCUK had authority to bind Greensill Bank AG to the letters of engagement, addressed to GCUK and signed by a GCUK officer, under which Marsh Ltd provided insurance broking from 2014. The court held that Marsh had not shown to a high degree of probability that GCUK had actual or ostensible authority to bind the bank, or that the bank ratified the letters, and found the involvement of the bank's 2014 chief executive Danyon Lloyd, of Group General Counsel Jonathan Lane, who was not an officer of the bank, and of Jason Austin, described as a co-founder of the Greensill business, a GCUK director and a member of the bank's supervisory board without executive powers, insufficient to infer that authority; without making a finding of fact at that interim stage, it considered that GCUK more likely than not lacked it. ^{4 5}

analysisThe Companies House appointments record of Alexander David Greensill lists 15 appointments. Apart from a directorship of Shotwick Park Estate Limited (14009366), held from 29 March 2022 to 5 June 2026, all of them are in Greensill group companies, including two separate directorships of Greensill Capital Securities Limited. The register of persons with significant control of Shotwick Park Estate Limited shows Lex Greensill over the same period with 75% or more of the shares and voting rights and the right to appoint or remove directors. On 5 June 2026 Peter Edward Greensill was entered with the same controls and removed the same day, and Lex Greensill was entered again with 75% or more of the shares, more than 25% but not more than 50% of the voting rights and the right to appoint or remove directors. A second Companies House officer record for Peter Edward Greensill, with identifying details matching the former director of GCUK, lists one appointment: director of Cultivar International UK Limited (13901285) since 8 February 2022. ^{1 2 3}

analysisSean Robson-Hanafin has been a director of Silver Birch Finance Limited (13362558) since 28 April 2021 and of other Silver Birch companies, including Silver Birch Finance Holdings Limited (15 to 29 April 2021 and again since 31 July 2024), Silver Birch Trading Holdings Limited (since 20 July 2022) and Silver Birch Technology Limited (since 25 April 2025). A press report (May 2021), based on unnamed sources before the launch, said that Silver Birch Finance, a new trade finance venture co-founded by Sean Hanafin and joined by other former Greensill colleagues, was about to launch with its infrastructure funded by seed capital from partners at TDR Capital, and described Sean Hanafin as having worked for 18 months at Greensill, most recently as president and global head of origination for multinational corporates. The same report said that a spokesperson for Silver Birch Finance confirmed it would announce its launch that week, and that people close to the firm said it would not provide supply chain finance of the kind offered by Greensill Capital, its model being based on receivables and inventory finance rather than payables. The registry records show neither the founders and their roles nor the funding. A trade-press report (May 2025) said that Silver Birch, a working capital structuring and advisory firm led by chief executive Sean Hanafin and backed by partners at TDR Capital, had acquired the trade finance technology company Tradeteq, and that Silver Birch said the deal raised its outstanding working capital volumes by 50% to US$1.5bn. The acquisition terms and the volume figure are the company's statements as reported by the press, with no transaction document in the record; Companies House records Sean Robson-Hanafin as a director of Tradeteq Ltd (10234056) and of Tradeteq (Advisors) Ltd (09837868) since 8 May 2025. ^{4 5 6}

analysisAlastair Eadie has been a director of Fractus CFO Ltd (16828244) since 3 November 2025 and, from the same date, its person with significant control with 75% or more of the shares and voting rights and the right to appoint or remove directors. A company-data aggregator's executive profile lists Bartholomeus Ras as a former Managing Director, Working Capital Finance, EMEA, of Pemberton Capital Advisors LLP; the profile gives no dates and is not confirmed by a register record or company statement, so when the role was held relative to the directorship of GCUK is not stated. Maurice Thompson was a director of Caversham Finance Limited (00785922) from 1 November 2014 to 2 June 2018. Caversham Finance entered administration in March 2020, with Chris Laverty, Trevor O'Sullivan and Helen Dale of Grant Thornton appointed as joint administrators, when it owed GCUK £30.8 million; the debt was repaid in full in July and August 2020 from asset realisations, and GCUK's administrators recorded that there were no further connections between Caversham and GCUK. ^{7 8 9 10 11 12}

analysisOn 5 March 2021 Credit Suisse appointed Geoffrey Paul Rowley and Anthony John Wright of FRP Advisory Trading Limited as receivers (office-holders appointed by a secured creditor to deal with the assets charged to it) of a charged account and receivables of GCUK. Geoffrey Rowley is recorded at Companies House as a director of FRP Advisory Group plc and FRP Advisory Trading Limited since 14 November 2019 and as a designated member of FRP Advisory Services LLP since 9 December 2019. Three days later, on 8 March 2021, Christine Laverty, Trevor O'Sullivan and William Stagg of Grant Thornton UK LLP were appointed joint administrators of GCUK and GCMC; in a letter of 9 July 2021 to the House of Commons Treasury Committee they stated that they were not administrators or liquidators of the Australian parent, Greensill Capital Pty Limited, which is under the control of different insolvency practitioners. Christine Mary Laverty is recorded at Companies House as a member of Grant Thornton UK LLP from 1 February 2019 to 15 April 2025 and as a member of Grant Thornton UK Advisory & Tax LLP since 14 April 2025. ^{1 2 3 4}