By late 2019, Lex had definitively hit the big time.
Greensill Capital was a ‘Unicorn’ – a private start-up company valued at more than $1 billion. (The term was meant to indicate the rarity of these ventures, but unicorns were flourishing, in part thanks to a flood of money in the market, and the largesse of investors like SoftBank’s Vision Fund.)
Lex himself was a billionaire too, at least on paper. And though a large chunk of his wealth was tied up in Greensill Capital stock, Lex and his brother Peter had also taken hundreds of millions of dollars of cash out of the company.
The trappings of wealth followed. Greensill Capital had not one but four private aircraft – two Piaggios, a Dassault Falcon, and a Gulfstream G650. The planes were owned by Greensill Bank which leased them to Greensill Capital. All four were decked out in Greensill livery, and they were staffed by a full-time Greensill crew of pilots and flight attendants. Lex and senior executives used the planes to fly around the globe, meeting with shareholders and clients and politicians.
The Piaggios were used as runarounds to fly about the UK, visiting clients or investors. The biggest aircraft, the Gulfstream, costs about $60 million, and is one of the fastest civilian aircrafts on the planet. Lex could use it to fly non-stop from London to SoftBank’s headquarters in Tokyo. Sometimes, he would retire mid-flight to his own cabin at the back of the plane, where there was a bed and a separate area for him to work. It was always all business talk on the plane – work meetings and phone calls.
At home, Lex remained relatively understated, walking his dogs near his house in Saughall, Cheshire, and hanging out with his wife and children or visiting a local farmers’ market. Sometimes he’d wear a flat checked tweed cap – like an English country squire – and a green fleece jacket, or a blue Patagonia one with General Atlantic’s logo stitched onto it.
Lex didn’t talk much about his home life. He rarely mentioned his wife or his children at work. Very few, if any, people seemed to feel they knew him well. But there were signs of how his new, vast wealth was changing his life.
He donated £2.5 million to Manchester University to support the appointment of a ‘Greensill Chair in FinTech Investment’. The vice chancellor said the donation would help boost the university’s fintech credentials. In a press release, Lex said, ‘We are delighted to be able to give back to an institution that was so important to the foundation of our firm.’
The old vicarage where Lex and his family lived underwent a multimillion-pound makeover that included a hi-tech wine cellar, games room and pool. After Covid-19 hit, and everyone was working from home, Greensill’s senior executives smirked at what they could see in the background on Zoom calls: through the window behind Lex, they watched a team of gardeners, dressed in Greensill farming outfits, working away on the estate.
Lex even tried to buy a tract of land in the local area for a ‘rewilding’ project. With the SoftBank money pouring into Lex’s bank account, he made a proposal to the local parish council to buy about 1,000 acres around Saughall. Lex personally met with local councillors and residents to pitch his idea. The minutes of the Saughall and Shotwick Park Parish Council meeting outline the scale of Lex’s plans to erect a ‘two-metre-wide hedge, plant thousands of trees to create forests, orchards and wildflower meadows and introduce some rare breeds of livestock, etc.’
Lex met again with councillors and residents several times to promote the project. He told them that ‘our natural world has come to face many threats including climate change, wildlife decline and the loss of natural habitats . . . [The] project is my dream to make a small impact on these very important issues.’
A local newspaper speculated that Lex’s ‘green vision’ might have been an attempt to offset the carbon footprint from his private jets. But when executives at Greensill Capital talked to Lex about it, he gave a different reason: ‘It’s the kind of thing that billionaires do with their money.’
Lex and his brothers were included in lists of Australia’s richest people. He also bought property in Australia. Greensill director John Gorman had a huge Florida home. Sanjeev Gupta owned an Italianate mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour. Lex spent A$4 million on an ocean-front home in Bargara, near Bundaberg where he grew up. A real-estate listing for the property, known as The Glass House, calls it ‘a multi-award winning architectural masterpiece of sophisticated style in an ideal location . . . Exclusively nestled amidst a tropical garden oasis, this sublime absolute beachfront property exudes privacy and tranquility.’
The house, which had a heated pool and glass lifts, was near another luxurious home owned by Peter and a few minutes’ drive from his parents.
Greensill’s farming business was also benefiting from the influx of money into the family. The farm expanded rapidly. Peter’s seed money into Greensill Capital had harvested a fortune. ‘It was a pretty good trade for me in hindsight,’ he told an Australian paper. The family acquired more land and spent millions buying the best farming equipment. Lex bragged to finance types he met in London that they owned some of the most expensive agricultural machinery money could buy, including the largest water carrier in Australia.
A video, posted to the Greensill Farming Facebook page, opens with a shot of Lex, Peter, their brother Andrew and their parents, standing in front of a farm building under a sign for ‘Greensill Sweet Potatoes’. Everyone is in the bright yellow and blue overalls that all Greensill farm workers wear – except for Lex, who is in smart black shoes, grey slacks and a blue banker’s shirt with a white collar and white cuffs, like an Australian Gordon Gekko.
On its website, Greensill Farming said it had grown from the original 66 acres managed by Lex’s grandfather to more than 8,000 acres. It grew more than 5 per cent of all the watermelons in Australia.
Not everyone was happy with their progress. Some local farmers were upset that Greensill Farming used money from the finance business to expand aggressively, paying over the odds for vast tracts of land, then driving down the price for sweet potatoes, piling pressure on other farms in the area. One of the critics was Rodney Wolfenden, chairman of Australian Sweet Potato Growers, who told The Times that ‘The Greensill farming business is cutting prices to buy market share. Some local growers have gone broke. Others have been forced to cut production and lay off staff.’
The story quoted another farmer: ‘There is no way this money was coming from sweet potatoes. If they are, then why am I not sitting in the f***ing Taj Mahal? . . . They have been cutting the cost of sweet potatoes to drive us out of the market.’
The flood of money was also making waves through Greensill Capital. Lex was a generous employer and placed a high value on loyalty to the cause. Staff were well paid, often salaries were two or three times the going rate, and many were given stock. Lex told me this was a sign of his generosity, giving away a stake in his company. Some senior executives who left on bad terms felt that Lex used their stock as leverage, to secure their silence about Greensill’s riskier strategies and tactics – keep quiet and he might let you keep the shares. Another source told me that Lex took the idea for giving out so much stock from WeWork’s Adam Neumann, whom Lex described as a friend. Even very junior staff flew business class and stayed in expensive hotels. He even once flew his tailor from the UK to New York to make bespoke suits for the Greensill team there. Staff were supposed to pay half the cost of the suits, with Greensill footing the rest, but no one ever got a bill. Perhaps it was just as well – the tailor mostly specialized in making shirts, and some of the suits fitted badly.
Corporate events were often staid – a reflection of Lex’s own demeanour. But they were not cheap. A Christmas party for London staff in 2019 was held at the swanky Gothic revival St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Chris Bates, who was the most senior figure at Greensill’s Warrington campus, also held a second party for staff at a hotel in Cheshire. It was informal – Lex turned up in a pair of red chinos and a green waistcoat, with some staff remarking that he looked like a Christmas elf.
There was also an annual ski trip for staff. The 2020 version was held in Sweden, and a couple of hundred people took advantage of the heavily subsidized trip. This was the sort of thing that used to happen at big investment banks, though mostly it had ended after the financial crisis led to belt-tightening. At Greensill, Lex instead auctioned off use of the private jet to company insiders – the highest bidder could take the jet to the ski trip. The winner was Roland Hartley-Urquhart, who diverted the plane via Helsinki, where he first went to visit a yacht-maker, before continuing to the ski hills. Lex himself had not learned to ski until he was an adult. ‘He skied fast and loose,’ one former Greensill executive told me. ‘The same way he did business.’
The hiring spree also really gathered pace at this time too. The SoftBank and General Atlantic investments made Greensill Capital a much more credible career move, as did the growing relationship with Credit Suisse. Several new senior hires came on board around this time, including Sean Hanafin, an experienced banker with a career at Citi and Standard Chartered under his belt, and a handful of top executives from technology start-ups and supply chain finance technology platforms such as Taulia. Neil Garrod, the former treasurer at the major Greensill client Vodafone, also jumped across to Greensill to become CFO. Greensill opened offices in Singapore, São Paulo and Johannesburg. New senior hires were told to recruit their teams without restraint.
Lex also spent millions to acquire other companies. He paid about $50 million to acquire Finacity, a US-based firm that specialized in securitizing receivables and had a big client base in the global shipping industry. Finacity, run by entrepreneur Adrian Katz, processed about $100 billion of transactions a year, multiples of what Greensill was dealing with up to that point. (After Greensill collapsed, there was a protracted sale process for Finacity, which was held up partly because of Katz’s claims to payments he said he was still owed by Greensill. In the end, Finacity was bought by White Oak Global Advisors for $7 million, and Katz stayed on as CEO. Bloomberg reported that he dropped demands for $21 million in payments related to Greensill’s earlier acquisition of Finacity.)
Lex also bought FreeUp, a UK-based start-up that was trying to find ways for workers to access their pay more effectively. Lex paid $5 million for FreeUp in October 2019, and effectively wrote its value down to zero the following summer. He also bought a similar Australian company called Earnd for another $12 million in February 2020 – $8 million of this was booked in the accounts to ‘goodwill’, effectively the excess purchase price over and above its fair market value. Flush with cash, Lex hardly seemed to be driving a hard bargain.
For new senior executives joining Greensill, there would be an invite from Lex to visit the farm in Australia for a few days. Beforehand, they’d typically get a message from Lex’s personal assistant, asking them their clothing size and measurements. When they arrived, they’d be presented with a set of the yellow and blue Greensill farming overalls, boots and hat to wear on the tour of the extensive farmland, all in their size, with the Greensill logo embroidered into the jacket. Some thought this was a silly unnecessary expense. Some thought it bizarrely cultish. Others thought it was a nice gesture, which reflected Lex’s focus on fine details and showed how much the family farm meant to him.
Greensill’s accounts for 2019 showed a business transformed. Revenue had almost doubled, from $270 million in 2018 to $476 million in 2019, though Greensill’s profits fell. The number of employees had almost tripled in twelve months, from 214 staff to 618.
IN JANUARY 2020, Lex was sitting beneath a vast sky, a small cup in his hand, basking in the warming glow of a well-kept campfire. He could have been back home on the farm with his brothers. But Lex had come a million miles by then.
Instead of farmers’ overalls and heavy boots, Lex wore a dark blue suit, double-cuffed shirt and sober blue tie. His black R.M. Williams Chelsea boots – a nod to his Australian heritage – were partially tucked under as he sat on a thick, red carpet. Alongside him, the former prime minister of the UK, David Cameron, was dressed in almost the same way. They reclined against red and gold velvet cushions, a collection of shiny tea kettles at their feet. This was the desert retreat of the Saudi prince Mohammed Bin Salman, one of the richest – and most controversial – figures in global business and politics.
Lex had worked his way into the upper echelons of global power. Like Cosimo de’ Medici, whose bank pulled the strings in Renaissance Europe, Lex knew that money could make politicians dance to his tune.
Lex was enthralled by the Saudi trip, even if Mohammed Bin Salman, known as MBS, was just re-emerging from a brief period of international censure. The CIA had concluded in 2018 that MBS himself had ordered the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier that year, according to a report in The Washington Post. The murder and ensuing investigations had caused many top business and political leaders to shun MBS for a while and avoid visiting the Gulf country. But the lure of the Saudi kingdom’s vast oil riches, and MBS’s ambitious and costly plans to reinvent his country, were enough of a draw for the bankers to overcome their concerns. By October 2019, the global business elite were flocking back in their thousands, attending the so-called ‘Davos in the desert’ finance summit in Riyadh and showing up with the aim of striking big deals.
Lex had good reason to join the parade of bankers to the Gulf. For starters, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), was the single largest investor in SoftBank’s Vision Fund. That stake also meant Saudi Arabia was effectively a major shareholder in Greensill too.
There were also potentially lucrative projects to work on. MBS’s modernization plan for Saudi involves huge infrastructure spending – including a vast new, futuristic city that would feature high-speed trains and skyscrapers on a scale that dwarfs the tallest buildings in New York or London. All of this would need financing.
Lex and some of the executives at SoftBank also at one point discussed a plan to create investments that were tied to the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. SoftBank and Greensill executives discussed how to ease the logistical pain, and enrich themselves, by making loans to hotels, infrastructure projects and transport operations that were needed to support the pilgrims. Their plan was to bundle up these loans into securities and sell them on to investors. It was outlandish, but potentially incredibly lucrative.
There was another, more down-to-earth deal to be done too. Saudi Aramco, the part state-owned oil and natural gas company, is one of the largest companies in the world. Aramco – which had listed some of its shares in December 2019 on the Saudi stock exchange, the Tadawul – processed as much as $2 billion in supplier payments each month. There was a huge supply chain finance programme in the pipeline. Such were the potential opportunities – and the vast pool of wealth to be tapped – that Lex flew into Saudi regularly in the early months of 2020 on his private aircraft. He was even planning to open an office in Saudi, with several staff permanently on the ground.
After the camping trip, Lex pinged back to Greensill executives a photo of himself and Cameron fireside, with a message that said, ‘We have lots of work to do.’ In the end, none of these deals came to fruition.
It didn’t matter. To the outside world, Greensill’s business appeared to be booming. In early 2020, Greensill held a meeting with a small core of the top management team, board members and a group of bankers from Credit Suisse. Top of the agenda was a planned IPO of Greensill’s shares. SoftBank was targeting a sale of the company in 2024. General Atlantic had a similar timeline. Lex and some of the other insiders had already pocketed a fortune. But Lex, Peter, John Gorman and others still held a huge amount of stock that would pay out in bundles if the company could get to launch an IPO. The Credit Suisse bankers were bullish. Given Greensill’s recent trajectory, if the company could hit $800 million in revenue in 2020, an IPO could follow quickly after, and the IPO could achieve a staggering valuation of up to $40 billion, the bankers estimated. Shane Galligan, Credit Suisse’s Australian private banker, who counted Lex as a personal client, delivered a rousing speech to pump everyone up. ‘Your firm is worth billions, and we’re going to take it to the market!’ he exhorted.
Greensill would become one of the most valuable financial firms in the UK, rivalling the likes of Lloyds or Barclays.
As the meeting ended, the collected executives left the room half stunned, like lottery winners who had just discovered they held the winning ticket. Lex was beaming. He could hardly contain his thoughts. ‘If we pull this off,’ he said, ‘me and my brother will be the richest men in Australia.’