Assets worth more, Lex Greensill tells ASIC

Lex Greensill is still talking up the value of his collapsed financial empire.

Lex Greensill is still talking up the value of his collapsed financial empire. Picture: Annabel Moeller

Lex Greensill is still talking up the value of his collapsed financial empire, telling the Australian corporate regulator that his Australian operation’s assets are worth more than its creditors claim.

Mr Greensill lodged a 19-page document with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission on Friday, including account tables detailing what he believes his Australian arm’s assets are worth, how much it is owed and how much it owes others.

According to the document’s unaudited figures, Mr Greensill says Greensill Australia has assets worth more than $US820m ($1.08bn) and is owed $US340m, with liabilities to creditors totalling $US930.5m.

This means if the company is liquidated and it is repaid all the money it is owed it will have about $US230m in change — more than enough to ensure staff entitlements, which Mr Greensill estimates total $2.3m, are paid.

But the lion’s share, about $US800m, of Greensill’s Australian assets are shares in other insolvent Greensill entities: its British operations and Germany-based Greensill Bank, making the stock potentially worthless.

Greensill Bank’s Australian and British assets were frozen this month after the bank’s German administrators won legal approvals, including in the Australian Federal Court, to stop them being sold off.

And $US337.4m of the $US340m Greensill Capital is owed is from its insolvent British operations. The documents filed with ASIC show a valuation of $US12.6m for its shareholding in Earnd, a fintech company that provides services allowing workers to be paid wages ahead of their scheduled payday.

Greensill paid about $US20m for Earnd in March 2020, and the business was sold by its administrators only weeks ago.

The documents obscure Mr Greensill’s estimated valuation of Omni Technologies, a second start-up acquired in mid-2020, and which is still up for sale.

The figures also differ significantly from early estimates compiled by the financial services company’s administrators, Grant Thornton, which have received creditors claims totalling more than $1.75bn.

That figure could rise to as high as $4.8bn after the Association of German Banks lodged a contingency claim of up to €2bn ($3.08bn) against the group.

The money owed to Greensill’s Australian arm from its British operations is also less than half of than the near $US800m claim administrator Matt Byrnes of Grant Thornton has submitted to Greensill UK, which is undergoing a parallel administration process run by Grant Thornton’s London office.

Greensill filed for insolvency last month after it failed to strike a deal to renew its policies with its insurers and Credit Suisse froze $US10bn of investment funds, which Greensill relied on for buying the debt securities it issued.

Fallout from the company’s collapse has spread from London to Germany to New York and Bundaberg, with creditors also chasing Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, which owes Greensill about $US5bn ($6.5bn).

On top of that, West Virginia coal miner Bluestone Resources, owned by the state’s billionaire governor Jim Justice, is suing Greensill, alleging fraud.

Meanwhile, the financier’s US operations has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Mr Greensill’s relatively upbeat assessment of the financial position of his Australian operations comes after a leaked internal video to staff revealed he was boasting that his financial empire had access to “enormous amounts of liquidity” three weeks before it collapsed into insolvency.

He said this included the investment-grade funds from Credit Suisse “right through to the high income fund that can be the non-investment grade fund that doesn’t require insurance”, and Greensill was continuing to see “robust inflows”.

“Indeed, we’ve actually had to kind of slow down the inflows,” he told staff.

The video, filmed on February 15, came two months after Mr Greensill — who was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to the economy in 2017 — was spruiking a pre-IPO capital raising worth up to $US600m ($789m) that could value the company at $US7bn.

However, that was quickly abandoned.

Greensill’s Australian arm is likely to be placed into liquidation if a buyer can’t be found for its assets and a deed of company arrangement (DOCA) struck.

Its British operation is also struggling to find a buyer after US private equity group Apollo Global Management abandoned a deal to buy most of its assets. About 500 of Greensill’s British employees have been retrenched.

Creditors are set to vote on Greensill Australia’s fate at a meeting scheduled for around April 22.