Greensill achieved its rapid growth by becoming, in effect, a lender of last resort. A handful of risky borrowers came to dominate its business, the largest of which was Sanjeev Gupta’s steel group, to which Greensill kept lending long past the point where it was obvious there was no ability to repay. As time went on, more and more loans started to go sour, and the insurers started to pull out. The business finally collapsed when the new Japanese owners of its last insurer (a small, bamboozled Australian outfit) called time.

DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes, that's right. So many of these supply chain finance assets, the biggest insurers in particular, the pension funds and so on, they can't invest in them because they're not investment grade. And so the way you make the investment grade is you take out trade credit insurance, and that makes them investable for a much broader group of investors. The trouble for Lex was a lot of the big trade credit insurers wouldn't work with him. They met him over the years, and they dealt with them over the years and found they didn't like the way we did business. And it's a question I took to Credit Suisse, and I took to SoftBank as a journalist many times. It was so startlingly problematic. In the end, The Bond & Credit Co. was taken over by a company -- Japanese insurer, Tokio Marine. And when Tokio Marine got involved, they looked at The Bond & Credit Co's exposure to Greensill and the Green -- the funds that were investing in Greensill assets. And they said, hey, this is too much. We don't want to do this anymore. And that really spelled the end, right, because without that insurance, the funds that have invested in Greensill's assets, they're no longer able to go out to the same pool of investors. DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes. I mean I think that's also another really important point. And I think it's always very tempting with these kind of white collar scandals to think that there are no victims, but there are victims here, not least the 1,000 or so Greensill employees who lost their jobs. So Credit Suisse's role was to provide the funding for these supply chain finance transactions and other loans, although they might argue they didn't know that's what was happening. Pyramid of Lies charts the meteoric rise and spectacular downfall of Lex Greensill and his company. He had a simple idea that disrupted a trillion dollar industry and drew in Swiss bankers, global CEOs, and world leaders, including former British Prime Minister, David Cameron. But a staid business model concealed dubious practices, as Greensill made increasingly risky loans to fraudulent companies using other people’s money. Lex, he had a small bank in Germany, but he wasn't a bank. He needed to find funding from somewhere to pay for these supply chain finance transactions. And so he was looking for investors for that. And Credit Suisse came along and became the biggest investor in those funds. So Lex had sort of latched on to them around 2017, found a couple of portfolio managers, persuaded them that supply chain finance was a great asset class. It paid a little bit more yield than money market funds, but done properly, it could be just as safe or just a little bit riskier.What distinguishes the Greensill saga from other corporate scandals such as the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s or Robert Maxwell's misappropriation of pension funds is the way in which it encompasses, and taints, figures from the highest levels of politics and officialdom, most notably David Cameron and the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood. So the biggest trade credit insurers said, no, we're not going to work with you. That left him with a bit of a problem, which he solves by going to a very small Australian insurer called The Bond & Credit Co. And The Bond & Credit Co. ended up providing billions and billions of dollars of insurance to the Greensill business. And it was startling to me, looking at it as a journalist to say, this can't be right, how can this tiny company be so critical in these billions of dollars worth of funds.

And interestingly, as soon as he gets a role at Greensill Capital, which lends a lot of credibility to the firm to have a former Prime Minister working for you is really a stamp of approval. Why David even did it is really interesting, right? So I think what's the upside for him of his relationship with Greensill Capital: one, is potentially a huge payout. So he gets paid a decent salary, and he gets paid a good bonus, but he also gets options, which had they paid off, he would have got tens of millions of pounds. Many of them, they are never going to see the amount that they had put into it,” Guth said. “But they will be able to benefit from some of it. And some of it may be better than nothing at all.” Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. NATHAN HUNT: Duncan, you've been following the Greensill story for years. I'm wondering how early did you know that this story wasn't going to end well? When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk.The Cameron government’s endorsement mattered commercially. Whitehall awarded Greensill contracts “for projects Greensill had proposed when working in Whitehall”. Greensill used the CBE the Conservatives gave him as a quality assurance mark, and in 2018 bagged the former prime minister himself. Duncan Mavin of Dow Jones joins the Essential Podcast to talk about his new book "The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion Dollar Scandal". Duncan discusses Greensill Capital and its collapse, which damaged the reputations of a former U.K. Prime Minister, prominent venture capitalists, and Credit Suisse. He also talks about the bizarre experience of reporting on a company where the red flags were obvious, and yet thoroughly ignored by investors. To its founder, Greensill Capital is more than a business: his whole new identity depends upon it. As the story unfolds, we see his drive and determination evolve fatally into messianic ambition and a blinkered disregard for differing views.