Cameron ‘brokered Obama meeting’ for tycoon at centre of lobbying scandal
Financier boasted of landing White House role that paved way for multi-billion pound deals
A TYCOON at the centre of a lobbying scandal engulfing David Cameron boasted that the former Prime Minister set up a meeting between him and Barack Obama that paved the way for the magnate’s finance firm to strike deals across the world.
Lex Greensill claimed Mr Cameron brokered an introduction to the then US President while the Australian financier was working as a Downing Street adviser. Mr Greensill said the meeting led to him securing a similar foothold in the White House.
The revelation comes as Mr Cameron faces pressure over his efforts last year to lobby Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Government officials to help Mr Greensill’s stricken finance firm Greensill Capital through the Treasury’s coronavirus loan scheme. At the time, Mr Cameron is said to have had share options potentially worth tens of millions of pounds. Mr Cameron was last week cleared of breaking lobbying rules, but questions over his activities with Greensill Capital persist.
Mr Greensill’s business model was to provide quick loans to companies not wanting to wait for received payment from customers. Two years ago, the company said it had provided financing worth more than £100billion to ten million customers in 175 countries. But Greensill Capital sunk into administration this month when it emerged that many of its loans were unlikely to ever be repaid. One casualty has been one of its clients, Liberty Steel, which employs 3,000 across Britain. This weekend it was seeking a £170million Government bailout.
In Scotland, Liberty took over the country’s last major steelworks, in Clydebridge and Dalzell, with the help of a £7 million taxpayer funded loan from Scottish Enterprise, which it has failed to pay back.
The Scottish Government could also have to pay up to £32 million a year, for a quarter of a century, as part of a financial guarantee offered to a Fort William smelter and hydro-electric, which was bought by GFG, the parent company of Liberty Steel, in 2016.
In a 2018 interview – the same year he hired Mr Cameron as an adviser to his firm – Mr Greensill boasted of his contacts. He told The Australian newspaper: ‘David wanted advice [when he was PM]. It was really around, “How do we get credit to small companies and what things can we do? And then
David introduced me to Barack Obama and I did a similar thing for the Obama administration.’
Mr Greensill subsequently signed up General Mills, Kellogg and AstraZeneca. With technology partner Taulia it used a picture of the White House in some marketing material.
In 2017, during an interview with the Australian TV network ABC News, the 44-year-old said: ‘One of the great things about being able to have an office at Downing Street, as I did, and indeed to also advise the President of the United States, is that they really do want to hear and to understand what the challenges of the real people are.’
Indeed, Mr Greensill, who was awarded a CBE by Prince Charles, reportedly wielded enough influence as one of the Cameron administration’s Crown representatives – experts who act as a focal point for groups of providers looking to supply to the public sector – to claim he had a pass to the Cabinet Office and a desk in No 10.
Lord Myners, a former Financial Services Secretary, has been raising concerns about Greensill Capital for two years and believes the saga illustrates a lack of robust regulation. ‘Greensill’s business would not have grown as it did without Cameron as a figurehead,’ he said. Mr Greensill, a farmer’s son from Queensland, launched his company in 2011 after witnessing the financial pressures suffered by his family because of delayed payments.
In 2012, Mr Cameron announced a cheap loan scheme to help pharmacists during delays in NHS payments. For Mr Greensill – who had advised Cameron on the plan – it was a chance to expand his business interests as it put supply-chain finance into the mainstream. The scheme for chemists, initially run by Citibank, is now subcontracted to Greensill Capital. Liberty Steel boss Sanjeev Gupta used Greensill Capital to bankroll a spending spree in steel, aluminium and energy.
A whistleblower alerted the Financial Conduct Authority about the investments in March 2018, yet the State-owned British Business Bank announced in June 2020 that Mr Greensill had been accredited as a lender for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, which helps small businesses. The financier then lobbied
unsuccessfully for loans from the Government’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility, set up to help big firms – an effort Mr Cameron tried to assist.
Mr Greensill’s dream of floating his company on the Stock Exchange with a £5.8billion valuation now lies in ruins and any chance of Mr Cameron netting tens of millions of pounds for his reported one per cent stake in the firm is gone. GFG Alliance, which includes Liberty Steel, said its lending arrangements were confidential but it had improved performance of its major businesses.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr Gupta, his firms, or Mr Greensill.
Neither Mr Greensill nor Mr Cameron responded to a request for comment.