The crisis began at Bond & Credit Company, the Sydney unit of insurance giant Tokio Marine Holdings Inc. last summer. It decided not to extend policies covering the loans Greensill made, and has fired a manager who had a key role in signing off on that business. Compounding Greensill’s problems, around the same time, the German regulator BaFin started a probe into his fast-growing bank in Bremen.

BaFin was concerned that too many of the assets of Greensill Bank were tied to the same source: Gupta. The investigation found irregularities, including that the bank had booked claims for transactions by Gupta that hadn’t yet occurred but which were accounted for as if they had. During this slow buildup of pressure, in late 2020 Softbank wrote down its investment in Greensill, though this only came to light in recent weeks.