Dragon Capital (Ukrainian Investment Group)

Dragon Capital was founded at the initiative of Czech-born Tomas Fiala. Fiala had previously worked at Bayerische Vereinsbank in Prague while continuing his studies at the Prague University of Economics, and later joined the Central and Eastern European investment bank WOOD & Company; when that firm exited Ukraine, he stayed on with some of its core team members and founded Dragon Capital in 2000.⁠[1][1][2]

On August 2, 2000, Dragon Capital announced its opening in Kyiv, offering a full range of brokerage services to institutional investors along with corporate finance services for local and international companies. The firm was founded as a partnership of young finance professionals, each with at least five years of experience in Central and Eastern Europe; at launch its director of sales and trading was Michael Sito and its research director was Kamil Goca. The company said its aim was to renew Western investor interest in Ukraine after the 1998 Russian financial crisis.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

On August 17, 2000, Dragon Capital and the English-language newspaper Kyiv PostKyiv PostKyiv Post is an English-language news outlet in Ukraine, launched in Kyiv in October 1995 by American Jed Sunden and owned in turn by Sunden, Mohammad Zahoor, Adnan Kivan and his son Ruslan Kivan. It has long reported in English on Ukrainian politics, corruption and war, and won the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s Honor Medal in 2014; after its original newsroom was dismissed en masse in November 2021, it was rebuilt by a new team and is now published as a digital outlet.Open the full entry launched the KP-Dragon Index to track the performance of Ukraine’s stock market. The index comprised the ten most consistently traded large-capitalization stocks and used official prices from Kyiv’s PFTS exchange, though Dragon Capital’s traders could adjust them in the event of an obvious anomaly.⁠[4][4][4]

On March 14, 2002, Dragon Capital signed a cooperation agreement with the New York broker Auerbach Grayson & Company, joining its network of more than 80 broker partners worldwide: Dragon Capital’s research would be provided exclusively to Auerbach Grayson and distributed to its U.S. clients, with Auerbach Grayson effectively acting as Dragon Capital’s U.S. sales office.⁠[5][5]

Dragon Capital was named Best Equities House in Ukraine by the British financial magazine Euromoney in 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006. In 2004 the firm had offices in Kyiv and Prague and provided brokerage and corporate finance services to clients in Ukraine and Central and Eastern Europe.⁠[6][7]

According to rankings published by PFTS, Ukraine’s principal securities trading platform, Dragon Capital became the largest stock broker by volume in 2003, ranked third in 2004, and returned to first place in 2005. In 2006 it accounted for 32% of total share turnover on PFTS, twice the share of second-placed Concorde Capital, and that year it raised close to $450 million for 12 companies through public and private placements.⁠[8][8][9][9]

In December 2005, Dragon Capital placed a 10% stake in the retail chain Velyka Kyshenya on PFTS, raising $27.5 million in what was then the largest initial public offering in Ukraine; the new shareholders included funds run by Julius Baer, DWS, and East Capital, and the offering was more than three times oversubscribed.⁠[10][10][10][10]

In June 2006, on the eve of its tenth anniversary, PFTS named Dragon Capital the largest stock broker of the previous ten years. By then Dragon Capital had raised nearly $500 million in equity and debt financing for local companies that year, with clients including Velyka Kyshenya, LuAZ, Ukrinbank, Rodovid Bank, KP MediaKP MediaKP Media is a media and internet company that American Jed Sunden built in Ukraine starting from the Kyiv Post (named KP Publications until March 2006); its holdings once included the Russian-language weekly Korrespondent, the news site korrespondent.net and the portal bigmir.net. In 2006 the company raised $11 million by selling a 20% stake with the help of Dragon Capital; it sold the Kyiv Post in 2009, took in Ukrainian Media Holding (UMH) and Petro Poroshenko as investors in 2011, and in 2013 UMH bought Poroshenko’s 50% to become its sole owner.Open the full entry, Bank Forum, and Nova Liniya; in the first five months of 2006 it accounted for more than 36% of share trading volume on PFTS.⁠[6][6][6]

On December 19, 2007, Dragon Capital announced that it had sold a small minority stake to Goldman Sachs through a share capital increase, as a financial portfolio investment for Goldman Sachs; the deal closed the same day, and management continued to control the firm and run its day-to-day operations. Fiala, speaking as managing director and controlling shareholder, said the firm had grown from a brokerage operation into Ukraine’s largest full-service investment bank, with a team of about 120.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11][2]

In March 2008, Dragon Capital and East Capital Bering Ukraine Fund jointly acquired a 70% stake in the tomato products and food company Chumak from its co-founder, Professor Hans Rausing; Dragon Capital also acted as adviser on the transaction.⁠[12][12]

On August 31, 2010, Dragon Capital announced the launch of the private equity fund Europe Virgin Fund (EVF), which raised $45 million at its first close toward a target size of $200 million, to invest in mid-sized private companies with primary operations in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Investors included the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (SIFEM), among others; Dragon Capital itself committed at least $20 million as a limited partner, and the fund’s investment team was led by Alex Munteanu and Kamil Goca, one of Dragon Capital’s founders.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

In January 2011, the Kyiv Post named Dragon Capital the best investment company in its “Best of Kyiv 2010” selection. Then-managing director Brian Best estimated the firm’s market share at about 30%; at the time, the firm had completed more than 50 deals since 2005, raising about $2 billion, its asset management arm had $600 million under management, and it took part in more than a third of transactions on the Ukrainian Exchange.⁠[2][2][2][2]

In late February 2014, during the Maidan protests, Dragon Capital decided to invest in independent media and founded the NV (Novoye Vremya) magazine and website; Fiala said the aim was to ensure that Ukrainians would not have to pay such a high price for democracy in the future.⁠[14][15]

In November 2015, Dragon Capital launched the private equity fund Dragon Capital New Ukraine Fund, focused on growth-capital investments in Ukraine; the Ukrainian Redevelopment Fund, managed by Soros Fund ManagementSoros Fund ManagementSoros Fund Management is a U.S. asset manager founded by George Soros in 1970 and headquartered in New York. It operates as a family office and serves as the principal asset manager for Open Society Foundations, investing across equity, credit and macro strategies.Open the full entry for Soros family clients, joined as a seed investor, Dragon Capital’s private equity arm acted as general partner, and Dragon Capital committed a substantial amount of its own capital. In June 2016, the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) approved up to $25 million in financing for the fund.⁠[16][16][16][17]

Dragon Capital’s businesses include private equity and asset management, investment banking, and equities and fixed-income sales, trading, and research, serving institutional, corporate, and private clients; its investment banking focuses on domestic and cross-border M&A, initial public offerings, private placements, and debt financing (including local bonds and Eurobonds), and its fixed-income division acts as a market maker in domestic and international debt instruments. The company describes itself as Ukraine’s largest investment bank and says it has completed more than 130 capital-raising, advisory, and M&A deals since inception, raising more than $10 billion in new capital.⁠[18][18][18][19][18]

As of May 2026, by the company’s own account, Dragon Capital had about $1 billion in assets under management and more than 200 professionals, managed six industry-focused funds and investment vehicles, and had a portfolio spanning real estate, machine building, food and beverage, e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, fintech, and financial services; its team remained in Kyiv during the full-scale war.⁠[20][20][20][20]

As of October 2026, Tomas Fiala represents the company as its founder, and the management listed on its website includes Ivo Suchy, head of financial markets and treasury and protector of the Fiala Family Trust; Brian Best, head of investment banking; Olena Bilan, chief economist and head of research; Eugene Baranov, head of infrastructure; Volodymyr Tymochko, head of real estate; and Andriy Nosok, head of private equity, among others. The company is headquartered at 36D Saksahanskoho Street in Kyiv and also has Dragon Capital (Cyprus) Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus.⁠[21][18][18][18][22][22]

Outside the investment business, Fiala was elected president of the European Business Association (EBA) for 2010–2015 and again in 2016, and in 2015 co-founded the independent policy research center Centre for Economic Strategy, serving as chairman of its supervisory board.⁠[1][1]

Dragon Capital: Official website: https://dragon-capital.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dragon-capital/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

Facebook: Public profile: https://www.facebook.com/DragonCapitalUkraine/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]