Gryphon Holdings Plc is an Isle of Man registered company that acts as the holding company for the Group. We are the substantial majority shareholder in the legal entities that comprise Gryphon Investment Bank and we also make principal development capital investments in growth companies located in the main emerging markets of Europe and the Middle East.

Gryphon Holdings was established in 2007 by its management and certain prominent European family offices and has an independent Board of Directors, which allocates capital to the company’s subsidiaries, sets the overall strategy and acts as the main governance body for the Group. An experienced investment management team monitors existing development capital investments and evaluates new opportunities.

As an investor, we focus on rapidly growing companies, located in Egypt, Poland, Russia, Turkey or the Ukraine and requiring development capital. We have a particular emphasis on businesses that are either transferring and implementing proven business models from western markets to these geographies or operating in sectors that are especially leveraged to economic growth in these territories. The investment philosophy of the company is founded on the following four principles, which result from the management’s experience in the region, dating back to the 1970s.

• There is a general shortage of early stage development capital in emerging markets, creating attractive entry valuations.


• High returns have been achieved in emerging markets development capital, subject to having a long term view, a relationship based approach and an ability to add significant management and strategic value to the underlying investments.


• Strong economic growth and large undeveloped sectors in these economies make development capital investing less hazardous than in highly competitive developed markets.


• There is a large and growing pool of international and local financial capital seeking to acquire companies that can be built to critical mass, creating the potential for overvaluation at exit.

We invest our own capital and also assemble syndicates, involving our shareholders and trusted third parties that can add industrial or financial value to the investee companies as co-investors. Typical equity commitments range from €1mn to €25mn and we are sector agnostic, preferring to focus on the quality of the management team as the main investment criterion.