However, the financial performance of Greensill Capital in the years before those injections was not the best, far from it. In 2016, the company recorded losses of $72 million
Suddenly, the company's performance improved significantly, with revenues spiking to $100 million in 2017 and $233 million in 2018.
At one moment, Greensill started giving money to Gupta’s companies based on future invoices, something that did not even exist.Using their advanced AI and machine learning models, they projected the future possible invoices that Gupta's companies would receive and gave him money based on that. They continued to use this scheme for a while.
They grouped a lot of invoices that they owned, bundled them up into securities, and sold them to other banks or investment funds. This allowed them to raise money and lend to their clients. Credit Suisse saw those products as a very safe investment.
the bank promoted those investments as a safe asset. From 2017, Credit Suisse launched four funds to invest 10 billion dollars of client money in the supply chain financing company Greensill.They heavily relied on the fact that this investment was risk-free as Greensill's invoices were insured, and the company had a high reputation using various advanced technologies in their business.
the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany responsible for supervising the banking sector, opened an investigation into Greensill Bank. "These transactions raise the question of how one can issue an invoice for a specific amount of euros or dollars to a particular company that sold particular goods on a particular day and claim that it is a future transaction."
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The rumors that Greensill Capital, together with companies linked to Gupta, were creating fictitious, non-existent invoices that were being financed raised red flags. The insurance company that was working with Greensill Capital deeply analyzed transactions and decided to cut its relationship with the company, warning them that they would not renew the policy of the company because it was impossible to insure something for which you could not assess the credit risk
For one of the biggest financial supporters of Greensill, Credit Suisse, this was unexpected news, forcing them to undertake serious measures to save investors’ money. The bank decided to freeze the fund to recover huge losses.
In 2022, the bank booked an 8.7 billion dollars loss following a series of trading, legal, and reputational problems. The failure of Greensill Capital has caused huge financial and reputational damage for Credit Suisse, which was believed to be one of the oldest, prominent, and safe banks in Switzerland.
https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/problem-framing
Activity: To solve the risk assessment and internal / External Auditing problems
https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/problem-framing/try-it/framing-exercise
" the vast amount of money that financed the Watergate burglary and the subsequent payments to the burglars."
"Hugh W. Sloan Jr., the treasurer of President Nixon's campaign finance committee, told the Senate Watergate committee that about $1.7‐million in cash was raised"
A. What are the risks of this finance product?
B. How fast can you find the risk using traditional auditing tool?
B. Can we use the more advanced data tools to assess the risk ?