Troubled UK finance firm Greensill Capital has collapsed into administration after encountering serious financial difficulties, administrators Grant Thornton UK LLP said on Monday, sparking fears for the future of thousands of jobs worldwide.
Greensill specializes in short-term supply chain financing for businesses, but itself faces funding problems, and mounting questions over opaque and complex accounting methods.
Administration caps a crisis-hit month for Greensill, whose collapse risks more than 50,000 jobs — including more than 7,000 in Australia — across the group and its customers.
“Chris Laverty, Trevor O’Sullivan and Will Stagg of Grant Thornton UK LLP were appointed as joint administrators of Greensill Capital (UK) Limited and Greensill Capital Management Company Limited,” Grant Thornton said in a statement on Monday. “The joint administrators are in continued discussion with an interested party in relation to the purchase of certain Greensill Capital assets. As these discussions remain ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
Sources close to the matter confirmed a Financial Times report that US private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc is seeking to buy parts of the group.
However, the paper said that any Apollo rescue would not include loans made to GFG Alliance Group headed by Indian-British steel billionaire Sanjeev Gupta.
Greensill lawyers appeared before a UK court on Monday, stating in court documents that it has “fallen into severe financial distress” and can no longer pay its debts, the Financial Times said.
Greensill was thrown into crisis a week ago when lender Credit Suisse Group AG suspended US$10 billion of funds after discovering that US$4.6 billion of insurance underpinning Greensill contracts had expired.
Greensill lawyers on Monday said that Credit Suisse had demanded repayment of a US$140 million loan, but had admitted that the firm has “no conceivable way” of repaying the sum.
The financier also has US$5 billion of exposure to GFG Alliance, which is also facing financial difficulty, Greensill lawyers said.
A GFG Alliance spokesman on Monday said that the firm is functioning normally.
Greensill also suffered a heavy blow on Wednesday last week when Germany’s financial watchdog froze the operations of its German banking subsidiary, citing an “imminent risk” of over-indebtedness.
The public prosecutor’s office in Bremen said that it had opened a preliminary probe.
Media reported that the German Financial Supervisory Authority, BaFin, had filed a criminal complaint against Greensill Bank AG over allegations it falsified balance sheets.
BaFin on Wednesday last week froze payments in and out of Greensill Bank, essentially closing it down.
It also expressed concern about accounting irregularities, including dealings with GFG Alliance.
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