SoftBank-Backed Greensill Taps ING Veteran to Expand Into Brazil

(Bloomberg) -- Greensill Capital, a fintech backed by SoftBank Group Corp., hired Samuel Canineu as Brazil country head to lead an expansion into Latin America’s biggest economy.

Canineu, ING Groep NV’s former chief executive officer in Brazil, will operate out of Sao Paulo for London-based Greensill, which makes loans companies use to pay their suppliers.

“I believe Brazil has a lot of potential, and I want to be at a company that has strong ambitions for Brazil,” Canineu, 39, said in an interview.

Greensill will start offering Brazilian companies more offshore, dollar-denominated credit, a market in which its infrastructure and technology are already in place. The plan is also to build a local team to deliver real-denominated local credit.

Greensill earlier this year acquired Bogota-based Omni Latam, a provider of working capital to small and midsize businesses in Colombia and Chile. The closely held fintech companies didn’t disclose a price for the all-stock deal, which created Greensill Latam in June. The firm expects to extend $880 million in credit in the region by the end of 2020, compared with $300 million last year.

“The central bank is trying everything to make the credit market less concentrated, and because of that Brazil is being more friendly to fintechs,” Canineu said.

Prior to joining Greensill, Canineu spent 17 years at ING, the last three as CEO in Brazil, where the bank’s total assets increased to 57.9 billion reais ($11 billion) as of June from 23.3 billion reais in September 2017, according to data from the central bank.

The executive began his career at ING Brazil in 2003 as an intern in the financial-markets team, and later helped start the company’s trade- and commodity-finance business in the nation. In 2007, he was transferred to New York to the U.S. leveraged-finance and sponsor-coverage team, and in 2009 he joined the syndications Americas group.

Canineu said he decided to leave ING before the Dutch bank announced last month that it would eliminate 1,000 jobs by the end of 2021 and close all of its offices in South America, including the unit in Brazil. ING is cutting costs and boosting its digital transformation amid economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Canineu will report to Freddy Boom, Greensill’s chief country officer for the Americas.

SoftBank Investment

Greensill, which was founded in 2011, received its first investment from private equity firm General Atlantic in July 2018, totaling $250 million. SoftBank’s Vision fund made two investments in the firm, one for $800 million in May 2019 and one in October 2019 for $655 million.

Globally, Greensill injected more than $163 billion of financing into 2020 to more than 10 million customers and suppliers across 175 countries. Volume in the first four months of 2020 more than doubled from a year earlier because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the company.

The firm, which offers the so-called supply chain financing, distributes part of the credit it generates to more than 100 investors, financing some of it through its German lender, Greensill Bank AG.

“As you talk to executives from large companies in Brazil that have large supply chains, they’re concerned with the ability of their small or middle-sized suppliers to get funding once the government stimulus is ceased or reduced,” Canineu said. “We can fill this gap.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.