Greensill’s Ghost Will Haunt the Finance World: Lionel Laurent

SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son and Credit Suisse AG Chairman Axel Lehmann doubtless wish their respective firms had never met disgraced financier Lex Greensill.

But hopefully they — and the finance industry at large — can learn lessons from the scandal that ensued.

Greensill’s charm, self-belief and supposed skill at turning the staid business of supply-chain finance into a booming source of cash had both Softbank and Credit Suisse seeing dollar signs, as Duncan Mavin’s new book about the saga — “The Pyramid of Lies” — reveals.

For Son, whose Vision Fund dragged SoftBank to a recent record loss, taking an ownership ...