Lex Greensill: roles at Greensill Capital (UK) Limited and the group

analysisCompanies House records Alexander David Greensill, known as Lex Greensill, as a director of Greensill Capital (UK) Limited (GCUK) from 2 July 2012 to 17 June 2026; the form TM01 terminating the appointment with effect from 17 June 2026 was filed on 25 June 2026. Since 6 April 2016 GCUK's register of persons with significant control has listed one person, Lex Greensill, with the nature of control recorded as significant influence or control over the trustees of a trust. GCUK's accounts for 2017, 2018 and 2019 named Greensill Capital Pty Limited as its immediate and ultimate parent company, and in those accounts the directors stated that they considered Alexander Greensill to be the ultimate controlling party. The National Audit Office's report of 7 July 2021 states that this Australian parent was 64.55% owned by its founder, staff and directors, including 28.06% held by a trust associated with Lex Greensill, with 25.11% held by the SoftBank Vision Fund and 10.34% by General Atlantic, a US private equity investor; the report gives no date or source for these percentages, and they have not been checked against the parent's share register, which is not in the record. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7}

analysisGCUK's 2019 annual report describes Lex Greensill as co-founder and CEO of the Greensill Group, who had previously been Managing Director and Head of Supply Chain Finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citibank and had established Morgan Stanley's global supply chain finance business; it adds 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 High Court's judgment in [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch) records that the group, which focused on supply chain financing, was founded by Lex Greensill, and that GCUK was its main operating and trading company in the UK, providing financial support and management for the wider group and performing a central treasury function. The Financial Conduct Authority likewise referred to Lex Greensill as CEO of Greensill in a letter of 4 May 2021 to Mel Stride MP, which reported two formal meetings between FCA staff and Lex Greensill, on 12 September 2019 and 9 December 2020. ^{6 8 9}

analysisBy March 2021 Lex Greensill was GCUK's only director. When the High Court (Mr Justice Michael Green, [2021] EWHC 700 (Ch)) made the administration order for GCUK on 8 March 2021, the application had been made by its sole director, Alexander David Greensill, while that for Greensill Capital Management Company (UK) Limited was made by Alexander David Greensill and Alastair Kenneth Eadie; the judgment carries the latter company's case number, CR-2021-000436, and GCUK's own administration is High Court case 000435 of 2021. The court recorded that Credit Suisse and another lender to the group, both notified, 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; on 4 September 2026 the High Court extended both administrations to 7 September 2028, and the administrators intend to end them by conversion to creditors' voluntary liquidations. On 28 April 2021 Lex Greensill made GCUK's statement of affairs as at 8 March 2021, which put its total assets at $1,472,148,187 at book value and $475,446,600 estimated to realise, figures that are the directors' estimates at the date of administration and do not account for the costs of the administration. ^{10 11 12 13}

analysisThe 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. Companies House lists Alexander David Greensill as a director of Greensill Capital Management Company (UK) Limited (GCMC) from 19 April 2012 to 17 June 2026, alongside 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), and GCMC's register of persons with significant control has listed Lex Greensill since 6 April 2016 with the same nature of control as at GCUK. At Greensill Limited, Lex Greensill was a director from 3 May 2018 to 17 June 2026; the High Court in [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch) states that Lex Greensill and Alastair Eadie, both also GCUK directors, were its directors at all material times, and Greensill Limited's annual report for 2019 named Lex Greensill as its ultimate controlling party in the directors' opinion. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10}

analysisFurther Companies House entries place Lex Greensill on the boards of other UK Greensill companies: Greensill Capital Trading Limited from 17 October 2014, Laufer Limited from 17 October 2016 and Greensill Capital Investments Limited from 21 November 2016, and, together with Alastair Eadie, Greensill Trading Limited, Greensill Trading 2 Limited, Greensill Trading 3 Limited and Greensill Trading 4 Limited from dates between 22 November and 20 December 2019. For all seven companies no resignation is recorded for Lex Greensill before the company was dissolved, whereas Alastair Eadie resigned from the four Greensill Trading companies on 2 March 2021. At Greensill Capital Securities Limited, Lex Greensill was a director from 18 May 2015 to 9 April 2018 and again from 2 December 2019. ^{3 5 4 6 11 12 13 14}

analysisFor Greensill GmbH, company-data aggregators' summaries of commercial-register publications show Alexander Greensill and Danyon Mayall Lloyd as managing directors from the company's registration on 28 March 2019, and a publication of 26 May 2023 recording the company's liquidation and that Alexander Greensill was no longer a managing director; the register entries themselves are not in the record, and the dates given are publication dates. Aggregators summarising Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs records list Alexander David Greensill as a director of Greensill India Finance Private Limited from 2 August 2020, but they are not the primary record and disagree about a third director, so that board list is neither complete nor verified. At the date of the Chapter 11 petition of Greensill Capital Inc., its board had two members: Lex Greensill and an independent director, Jill Frizzley, appointed by resolution dated 20 March 2021 to review actions related to the company's wind-up and the Chapter 11 case. ^{15 16 17 18}

analysisTwo further UK directorships began in the spring of 2021: Lex Greensill became a director of Earnd (UK) Limited on 4 March 2021 and of Greensill Global Trading Limited on 26 April 2021, on the days on which Alastair Eadie's directorships of those companies ended, and no resignation is recorded for Lex Greensill before either company was dissolved. In all, the Companies House appointments record of Alexander David Greensill lists 15 appointments, including two separate directorships of Greensill Capital Securities Limited; apart from a directorship of Shotwick Park Estate Limited, which Companies House records from 29 March 2022 to 5 June 2026, all of them are in Greensill group companies. ^{3 19 13 20 6}

analysisLex Greensill dealt with Credit Suisse over the limits on its supply chain finance funds' Greensill exposures, as recorded in [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch). Lex Greensill signed, with Adam Milenkovic, Chief Risk Officer of Credit Suisse's asset management division, and Luc Mathys, the agreement of 3 July 2020 limiting the Credit Suisse (Lux) Supply Chain Finance Fund's exposure to multi-obligor programmes to 5% by 31 December 2020 and to SoftBank Vision Fund-related companies to 7% in total and 3% per programme. On 11 December 2020, told by a group employee that meeting the limits required Katerra to be zeroed out, Lex Greensill replied that Katerra should be excluded from the calculation because Credit Suisse had not reported it to the regulator as part of the exposure, while Lukas Haas of Credit Suisse Asset Management wrote on 21 December 2020 that the 5% limit 'agreed between Lex and CS senior management earlier this year' had to be kept; on 7 January 2021 Lex Greensill accepted Credit Suisse's terms that the Katerra programme notes mature or be bought back by 31 March 2021 and that Vision Fund-related notes be at or below 5% of each fund by that date. In evidence Lex Greensill described the funds as the group's principal source of liquidity, saying they had provided over $10 billion of funding, which is Lex Greensill's evidence rather than a finding of the court; the court did find that, at the time of Katerra's difficulties around October 2020, Lex Greensill thought a default on the Fairymead Notes would have been existential for Greensill. ¹

analysisLex Greensill also dealt with SoftBank for the group in late 2020. After Lex Greensill and Tom Cheung of SoftBank Investment Advisers exchanged terms on 13 and 14 October 2020 for SoftBank Group Corp. to repurchase the Fairymead (Katerra) notes at par, $440 million, the proposal evolved into a $440 million injection into Greensill Capital Pty Limited, and the High Court found that it was Lex Greensill who sought to persuade the SoftBank defendants to make it, to prevent a default under the Katerra receivables purchase agreement and to salvage the Greensill fundraising, rejecting the case that SoftBank had imposed the terms. Lex Greensill was also a party to the Omnibus Deed, under which Lex Greensill, Greensill Capital Pty Limited and GCUK released SoftBank Group Corp., Vision Fund II and related parties from claims relating to the Katerra programme, the Katerra notes and any credit enhancement for Katerra. In [2025] EWHC 2631 (Ch), its judgment of 15 October 2025, the court held that Greensill Limited, acting through Lex Greensill, entered the Katerra agreements of 30 December 2020 for the purpose of prejudicing the noteholders' interests: it gave up its only asset in order to keep SoftBank on side while Lex Greensill sought a $1.5 billion loan to meet BaFin's demands concerning Greensill Bank, although Lex Greensill would have preferred to pay the noteholders in full. Lex Greensill had consistently explained in evidence that the $440 million injection was for the purchase or redemption of the Fairymead notes, and the SoftBank defendants contended that the intention, when Lex Greensill decided on 4 December 2020 to cause the transactions, was that the sub-fund would be made whole; the court did not accept that analysis, holding among other things that the purpose had to be ascertained when the agreements were entered into and that Lex Greensill had authorised Greensill Limited to enter into them on 30 December 2020. It also found that Lex Greensill knew Credit Suisse would not consent to the release of the receivables purchase agreement, did not ask for its consent and concealed the position, giving the misleading impression that the release would follow a buy-back of the notes, and it rejected Lex Greensill's evidence that SoftBank had prevented disclosure through the Omnibus Deed's confidentiality provisions. The claim against the SoftBank defendants was nonetheless dismissed: relief could at most have been capped at the $11.3 million value of the Katerra shares received by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which were cancelled in Katerra's bankruptcy in June 2021. ¹

analysisAs chief executive of GCUK, Lex Greensill pursued Greensill's applications to government Covid-19 schemes in 2020. Lex Greensill first contacted the British Business Bank's Chief Commercial Officer about accreditation under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) on 17 April 2020, before GCUK asked, in a Formal Proposal of 23 April 2020, for a lending allocation of £1 billion. On 26 June 2020, in a call by Second Permanent Secretary Charles Roxburgh with Lex Greensill and Bill Crothers, a GCUK director, HM Treasury told Greensill for the final time that it would not be eligible for the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), to which Greensill never gained access. The House of Commons Treasury Committee found that most of the lobbying on Greensill's behalf in 2020 was carried out by Lex Greensill, Bill Crothers and former Prime Minister David Cameron, an adviser to Greensill Capital, David Cameron or David Cameron's office making 56 contacts with the government in the period it examined. It concluded that the Treasury took the right decision in preventing Greensill from accessing the CCFF, and it accepted that David Cameron, who told it that lobbying the UK Government 'was never intended to be part of my role', did not break the rules on lobbying by former ministers, while saying those rules were not strong enough; a press report (January 2026) stated that a later inquiry found David Cameron's actions within the rules and that no registration as a lobbyist had been required. A review by Nigel Boardman, conducted at the request of the Prime Minister, examined government decisions on the development and use of supply chain finance and associated schemes, especially the role of Lex Greensill and Greensill Capital. ^{1 2 3}

analysisIn the Federal Court of Australia, BCC Trade Credit Pty Ltd and the Tokio Marine companies defended claims under the Greensill trade credit insurance policies partly on the contention that the policies were not validly entered into because of fraudulent non-disclosure or misrepresentation by GCUK and by Lex Greensill, among others; as summarised by the High Court in [2025] EWHC 1380 (Ch), this defence alleges misrepresentations and non-disclosures in procuring cover for the Catfoss group, Bluestone Resources and Liberty France Aluminium, made deliberately and dishonestly with Lex Greensill personally responsible. In the English disqualification proceedings Lex Greensill denied withholding relevant information from BCC's head of trade credit, Greg Brereton, or making misrepresentations to Mr Brereton or BCC, and Credit Suisse Asset Management stated in December 2022 its firm position that all relevant policies were valid and the insurers' claims unfounded. These pleaded defences have not been adjudicated: Greensill Bank AG and Credit Suisse settled their claims in 2026 on confidential terms and abandoned their indemnity claims, and White Oak, the sole remaining applicant, pressed its claim, including the non-disclosure and misrepresentation issues, at a trial that began in October 2026. Separately, a press report (February 2024) of court filings stated that Zurich Insurance Company, sued in the High Court by the administrators of Greensill Bank AG over trade credit insurance, alleged in a defence and counterclaim dated 26 January 2024 that the claims arose out of a 'fraudulent scheme' involving Lex Greensill, GCUK, Sanjeev Gupta and three Liberty businesses of GFG Alliance, including that receivables purportedly sold by Liberty to GCUK were not genuine. A spokesperson for Lex Greensill said that Lex Greensill 'wholly rejects' the allegations as without foundation and would address them in a defence and any counterclaims, a GFG Alliance spokesperson said GFG was not involved in Greensill's insurance arrangements, and no court ruling on the allegations and no outcome of those proceedings was found. ^{4 5 6 7 8 9 10}

analysisThe Secretary of State for Business and Trade brought disqualification proceedings against Lex Greensill in the High Court (CR-2024-001426) under section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, concerning Lex Greensill's conduct as a director of GCUK, Greensill Limited and Greensill Capital Pty Limited. The Secretary of State alleged three broad areas of misconduct: the Katerra transactions with SoftBank Group companies in November and December 2020 and the use of $440 million received by GCUK; misrepresentations and non-disclosures from September 2018 to trade credit insurers covering finance to Catfoss Renewables Ltd and Catfoss DBT Ltd; and, from August 2020, what the boards of GCUK and Greensill Capital Pty Limited were told about the trade credit insurance. The Secretary of State stated that the claim was not based on the alleged misconduct having caused the companies' insolvencies. Lex Greensill disputed the allegations and, as ICC Judge Mullen recorded in July 2024, regarded the case as unbalanced and unfounded and was concerned that untested allegations might be reported in the press without an effective opportunity to rebut them. On 18 March 2026 Mr Justice Trower dismissed Lex Greensill's application to strike out the claim ([2026] EWHC 639 (Ch)), and the Insolvency Service stated that the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal. The proceedings ended before the six-week trial due to begin on 8 June 2026: Lex Greensill gave a nine-year disqualification undertaking, which the Secretary of State accepted on 2 June 2026; in such an undertaking the director does not dispute certain facts for the purposes of the disqualification proceedings only, it is not a court finding, and the allegations were not tried. The Companies House register of disqualified officers records the undertaking as running from 23 June 2026 to 22 June 2035, during which Lex Greensill may not act as a director or be involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company without the court's permission. Announcing the undertaking on 4 June 2026, the Insolvency Service described the conduct as causing the Katerra transactions of late 2020 and causing or allowing GCUK to use $440 million received in November 2020 for purposes other than redeeming notes held by the Credit Suisse (Lux) Supply Chain Finance Fund, in breach of the duty to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence; the undertaking's statement of facts is not in the record, so it does not show whether the Catfoss or insurance non-disclosure allegations were covered. ^{7 11 4 12}

analysisOn 29 April 2025 a Part 7 claim, BL-2025-000562, Greensill Capital (UK) Limited (in administration) v Greensill and others, was filed in the Business List of the High Court; it is listed as a claim for breach of fiduciary duty against seven defendants, Lex Greensill, Sean Hanafin, Divya Eapen, Alastair Eadie, Neil Garrod, Jonathan Lane and Bartholomeus Ras, and a court docket summary and a press report (April 2025) describe it as brought by the company's administrators against former directors. The claim is the company's allegation: its particulars, the sums claimed and any defences are not in the record, no hearing, judgment or response by the defendants was found, and the administrators' progress report for 8 March to 7 September 2026 says that their investigations in respect of former directors are ongoing and lists claims against former directors among continuing work, without further details. Earlier, on 15–16 March 2021, Bluestone Resources Inc., Bluestone Coal Sales Corporation, Blackstone Energy, Ltd. and three individuals had sued GCUK, Lex Greensill and Roland Hartley-Urquhart in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (1:21-cv-02253) over GCUK's financing of the Bluestone coal businesses, claiming damages for breach of contract, fraud, breach of fiduciary duties and civil conspiracy, among other claims. Lex Greensill and GCUK appeared through counsel, and on Lex Greensill's application the court granted a temporary stay with the plaintiffs' consent on 2 September 2021. The complaint's allegations were not answered or adjudicated: the case was stayed as to GCUK after U.S. recognition of its administration in September 2021, dismissed on 1 July 2022 following a settlement whose terms are not in the record, and on 1–2 August 2022 the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed all claims against all three defendants with prejudice. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

analysisOn 2 August 2019 GCUK and Alexander Greensill issued a libel claim (QB-2019-002773) against Reuters News & Media Limited over an article Reuters published on 7 July 2019 under the headline 'Exclusive: Greensill issued false statement on bonds sold by metals tycoon Gupta'. The claimants pleaded that it meant they had knowingly given bond market investors and brokers false information in a May 2018 update that the Scottish Government had granted a guarantee, committing a criminal offence of market abuse; Reuters denied that meaning, and the natural and ordinary meaning was ordered to be decided as a preliminary issue before any defence was filed. In [2020] EWHC 1325 (QB), on 14 May 2020, the court held that the ordinary reasonable reader would not understand the article to convey any defamatory allegation against Alexander Greensill personally, because the word 'Greensill' in it would be understood as referring to GCUK, except in one paragraph that referred to Alexander Greensill personally; the judgment describes Alexander Greensill as the founder of the company in 2011 and its chief executive. According to the National Audit Office's chronology, Greensill dropped the libel suit against Reuters on 27 May 2020. ^{6 7}