Lex Greensill has portrayed himself as a savior for small businesses.
He started Greensill Capital to give the guy a banking service, mostly reserved for blue-chip companies: supply chain financing, a kind of cash advance that helps when customers need to be paid.
Mr Greensill, the son of an Australian melon farmer, wanted to bring this useful service to millions of smaller, less established businesses. He plans to build a technology platform that will attract larger competitors such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc.
His world collapsed this week when Greensill filed for bankruptcy, entangling a global network of lenders – more than half of them in the US – as well as the firm’s financial backers, SoftBank Group Corp., Credit Suisse Group AG and the Japanese insurer Tokyo. Marine Holdings Inc.
Small towns that held deposits with the German bank of Greensill were losing losses on businesses they said were safe. Investors in Credit Suisse supply chain funds that have invested in Greensill’s loans no longer have access to $ 10 billion in cash.