Financier Lex Greensill Decries ‘Code of Silence’ Around SoftBank Deals | Company Business News-OxBig News Network

(Bloomberg) — Financier Lex Greensill said there was a “code of silence” around a series of transactions with SoftBank Group Corp. to keep potential losses hidden, in his first public court appearance since the high profile collapse of his firm.

Greensill is giving evidence at a $440 million London trial brought by Credit Suisse against SoftBank over a restructuring agreement involving his trade finance firm in 2020. He said there was a risk that a financing arrangement for an increasingly troubled SoftBank-backed startup would trigger an “immediate” claim worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 

“There was a code of silence around this transaction,” Greensill said in court on Monday. “This whole transaction was to enable SoftBank to structure it as a balance sheet transaction so that it wouldn’t appear on the” profit and loss account.

Greensill said he was ultimately forced to accept the SoftBank restructuring calling it “painful.”

The London lawsuit is focusing on how Greensill restructured its relationship with Katerra Inc., a US-based construction company in which SoftBank was a major investor. Credit Suisse alleges SoftBank concocted the restructuring in 2020 so that it could pull its own money out of the firm, knowing full well that Greensill, already in free-fall, would be unable to repay the $440 million it owed to Credit Suisse. 

SoftBank argues that the Credit Suisse case has always been an attempt to shift blame “for its own poor investment decisions.” The allegations are “entirely without merit,” it said previously. SoftBank’s lawyers said that the $440 million was provided by the Vision Fund on the basis that it would be used to repay the Credit Suisse notes.

In his evidence, Greensill talked about the rupturing of his relationship with SoftBank and its founder Masayoshi Son, who once mentored him. He said that some executives were “threatened” by his close relationship with Son and that he would speak directly with the founder, bypassing executives including Rajeev Misra, in an attempt to speed financial support from SoftBank.

“There were certain people in the organization who felt threatened by the nature of the relationship Son-san had with me,” Greensill said, using the Japanese honorific. “Some people liked to play games and make things difficult.” 

Credit Suisse previously disclosed emails in the trial from Misra, who was then sitting on the investment committee of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, who’d warned in an email that Lex Greensill was often dishonest and “slippery.” The two clashed over the levels of financial support that SoftBank would offer to Greensill through 2020, before Greensill Capital collapsed the following year.

“Mr. Son is SoftBank,” he said, describing him as “someone who can look over the horizon in a way most ordinary mortals can’t.”

Greensill will be questioned by lawyers for both Credit Suisse and SoftBank over the next two days. In a filing, SoftBank’s attorneys said that the financier had at times displayed “hostility” to the Japanese group. “He is in no sense the witness of the SoftBank group,” they said. 

UBS Group AG is pursuing the London claim on behalf of its former Swiss rival in a bid to recover funds for investors trapped in the supply chain finance vehicles. 

The fallout from Greensill spawned multiple legal fights around the world. Lex Greensill himself is fighting moves by the UK government to have him disqualified as a director, while his firm’s own administrators filed a civil case against him in April.

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