Building a Financial Giant with Lex Greensill, Founder and CEO of Greensill Capital

Summary: Miguel Armaza sits down with Lex Greensill, founder and CEO of Greensill Capital, a leading provider of working capital and supply chain finance solutions for businesses and individuals around the world. Founded in 2011, Greensill employs over 1,000 people worldwide and has raised close to $1.3 billion in equity from some of the largest funds in the industry, including SoftBank and General Atlantic. Lex Greensill Lex Greensill, Co-founder and CEO of Greensill Capital, saw first-hand the impact that an inefficient financial supply chain can have on a family’s finances, growing up on his parents’ sugar cane farm in Australia. Farming sugar cane is highly inefficient when it comes to working capital and getting paid. It takes up to 18 months to grow the crop and then another 12 months to get paid for it. Lex’s parents couldn’t afford to send him to university. He clerked at a country law firm, studied law at by correspondence at night and worked pro-bono for the Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association with a brief to make sure farmers got paid promptly. That principle, and the payment code Lex devised for farmers in Australia, became the foundation of Greensill that still guides the company today. Lex’s vision was always to make finance fairer for everybody. As a business, Greensill is harnessing its technology and financial expertise to accelerate the movement of cash into the real economy. Lex previously established the global SCF business at Morgan Stanley and led the EMEA SCF business at Citi. Lex holds an MBA from Manchester Business School and is a Solicitor of the Supreme Courts of England and Wales, and Queensland. In 2018, Lex was awarded the CBE for services to the UK economy. About Greensill Greensill makes access to finance faster, cheaper and fairer. Powered by financial technology but with deep expertise in credit management, we accelerate the movement of capital to where it is needed most, in the real economy. And through our vision of equal access to finance, we want to revolutionise the world of work, so no-one should have to wait to be paid. Greensill is the market-leading provider of working capital finance for businesses and people globally. Our more than 800 specialists worldwide have provided $143bn of financing in 2019 to more than 8m customers and suppliers in over 175 countries.