Tag Archives: Greensill Capital

And Now A Liquidity Crunch: Credit Suisse Halts Redemptions From Renaissance Feeder Fund, by Tyler Durden

It’s smart to keep your eyes on situations like this. Financial crashes often start with one institution’s problems, which are “contained” until they’re not. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Once upon a time, we couldn’t go an hour without some dire news involving Deutsche Bank (and its tens of trillions of gross notional derivatives). Now, it’s Credit Suisse’s turn.

In what was at least the third flashing-red headline for the day referencing the scandal-plagued Swiss Bank, moments ago Bloomberg reported that Credit Suisse, still humiliated from the billions it lost on Archegos and Greensill and countless subsequent banker terminations and defections, has temporarily barred clients from pulling their cash from a feeder fund that that was sold as an investment option for rich clients at the bank’s wealth arm, and which invests with Renaissance Technologies “after the strategy tanked and investors rushed to exit.”

To be sure, Credit Suisse has every right to impose this gate: according to Bloomberg, the Swiss bank invoked a hold back clause, after assets in the CS Renaissance Alternative Access Fund slumped to about $250 million this month from approximately $700 million at the start of 2020. While investors are expected to receive 95% of their redemption requests after two months, the remaining 5% is expected to be paid out in January, after the fund’s year-end audit, the people said. Hold back clauses are a standard part of offer documents at some U.S. based hedge funds.

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Con of the Week: Greensill Capital, by Matt Taibbi

Taibbi warns of fortunes generated from low margin businesses. Remember the warning if you’re thinking of investing in companies promising wondrous profits from low margin businesses like taxi rides and restaurant deliveries. From Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:

When the face of a traditionally low-margin business starts collecting private jets, it’s time to head for the exits

For an explanation of the “Con of the Week” feature, click here.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley…

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

Charles Dickens never quite explained the business of Scrooge and Marley in A Christmas Carol. We knew old Ebeneezer was familiar with the fellows at the “‘Change” (the stock exchange), spent time in a “counting-house,” and was owed money all over town. One of the few things that made him happy was the passage of time, for debts to him — marked “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge” — would become mere worthless securities, “if there were no days to count by.”

One theory is “Scrooge and Marley” were engaged in an age-old business called “supply chain financing.” The concept is simple. A supplier sells an order to a buyer. Rather than wait for the buyer to pay, the supplier accepts immediate payment with a slight discount from the supply chain financier, who in turn later collects the full amount from the buyer.

Scrooge once would have been a perfect fit as a leading man for Supply Chain Financing. It’s “blocking and tackling” finance work, a simple, unsexy living, best left in the hands of one who holds pennies in a vice-grip. If you’re not the type to bring a book of debts home for pleasure-reading, you wouldn’t prosper in this profession.

That was consensus, until Lex Greensill came along.

Lex Greensill testifying before the British Treasury Committee

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