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Greensill Capital’s administrator has filed a lawsuit against its founder Lex Greensill and six other former directors of the failed financial firm, adding to the legal challenges facing the Australian financier.
Greensill Capital’s main UK company, which collapsed into administration in March 2021 as part of a sprawling political and financial scandal, filed the lawsuit in London’s High Court on Tuesday.
Court records list the case type as “breach of fiduciary duty” but the full details of the claim and the nature of the allegations against each of the defendants are not yet available.
Administrator Grant Thornton, which is tasked with recouping funds on behalf of the failed company’s creditors, wrote in a report this month that it was taking “recovery actions against third parties” and had “issued additional letters before action against a number of parties”. The report added that the administrator had also “issued proceedings” in a bid to reclaim A$570,000 of loans made to “former employees”.
The lawsuit is the latest legal action against Lex Greensill, the charismatic founder of the eponymous lending start-up, who forged close ties to politicians such as Britain’s former prime minister David Cameron and prominent business figures including SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
The UK’s Insolvency Service last year launched proceedings to disqualify Lex Greensill from “running or controlling companies” for up to 15 years, the maximum possible ban. The government agency’s allegations included that the now 48-year-old financier made a “series of misrepresentations” about key insurance contracts.
Lex Greensill has previously rejected the Insolvency Service’s allegations against him and has also sued the UK’s Department for Business and Trade for alleged misuse of private information during the Insolvency Service’s investigation.
While the Insolvency Service did not take action against any other former directors of Greensill Capital, court records show that six other former board members have been named as defendants in the administrator’s lawsuit: Alastair Eadie, Divya Eapen, Neil Garrod, Sean Hanafin, Jonathan Lane and Bartholomeus Ras.
Before joining Greensill Capital as chief financial officer, Garrod was Vodafone’s treasurer for more than 18 years. The London-listed telecoms group was also a major client of Greensill Capital, which specialised in providing funding to companies against their invoices.
Eadie and Lane retained business ties to Lex Greensill after the collapse of the firm, having both invested alongside the Australian financier’s family in a sustainable coconut waste start-up in 2022.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s solicitors register lists Lane’s place of work as Cultivar International UK, an investment vehicle linked to the Greensill family.
Greensill Capital’s collapse led to billions of dollars in losses for investors in its financial products, including the now-defunct Swiss bank Credit Suisse and a regional German bank that was part of the wider Greensill group.
The firm’s most recent administrator’s report shows that $8.4bn has still not been repaid out of the $17.7bn of assets that Greensill Capital oversaw at the time of its collapse.
Lex Greensill did not respond to a request for comment. The six other former directors either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. Grant Thornton declined to comment.
