Credit Suisse pays back another chunk of money in Greensill debacle

Credit Suisse, the accident-prone Swiss bank, is to distribute a further US$1.7bn of funds previously tied up owing to the collapse of Greensill Capital.

In all, the bank has now paid back US$4.8bn to investors in funds that were heavily exposed to the supply-chain finance company Greensill, which is now in administration.

The Swiss bank said it remains in discussions with Greensill’s administrators about recovering more money.

READ Greensill Capital debacle the first mess for Lloyds Banking CEO to clear up when he moves to Credit Suisse

In the last 18-months, Credit Suisse has

• lost $4.7 billion after the collapse of Archegos Capital
• froze $10 billion in funds tied to Greensill Capital
• underwrote the Luckin Coffee IPO
• CEO stepped down after the bank admitted to spying on former employees pic.twitter.com/89mHA0Hxh2

— Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) April 7, 2021

Meanwhile, in Britain, the shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, has been granted an urgent question in the House of Commons to ask for an explanation from the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, of how Greensill was granted access to a COVID-19 loan scheme for businesses.

Dodds’s move comes a day after the government-sanctioned an independent review into how Greensill was able to secure government contracts.

Greensill, which bought up invoices and securitised them – a practice that has uncomfortable echoes of the collateralised debt obligations bubble that laid low the world economy in the second half of the first decade of this century – had former UK prime minister on its books as a lobbyist.

“I was inundated with people contacting me saying they couldn’t understand why Government wasn’t helping them, particularly self-employed people – (they were) really desperate for help, unable to get meetings with the Treasury at that time,” Dodds told Radio 4.

“Yet the door seemed to be open for Greensill and for David Cameron, and that’s the big question: why did there seem to be one rule for Conservative politicians and a different rule for those who desperately needed help, those many self-employed people excluded?” Dodds said.

As it turned out, Cameron’s efforts to get Greensill’s snout in the government’s COVID Corporate Financing Facility trough failed, although the company was given accredited lender status for the government’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Scheme, which allowed it to issue state-backed loans of up to £50mln.

Matt Hancock met David Cameron and financier Lex Greensill for a “private drink” to discuss a new payment scheme for the NHS

A number of NHS trusts went on to use Greensill Capital’s app during the pandemic

Please RT if you think everyone should be awarehttps://t.co/3ou36cvXFF

— NHS Million ???? (@NHSMillion) April 11, 2021

Story by ProactiveInvestors