Dragon Capital, a Kyiv-based investment company that invested about $700 million in Ukraine between 2015 and 2021, excluding reinvestments of several hundred million more, plans to invest $100 million in 2025 due to improved macroeconomic predictability and economic growth, anInterfax-Ukraine correspondent reports.
“In the middle of last year, we started considering new investments. This year, we plan to make about $100 million in new investments,” owner and CEO Tomas Fiala said at a conference titled ‘Logistics as a Driver of Economic Growth’ organized by the We Build Ukraine think tank in Kyiv on Tuesday.
The businessman added that it will be mainly financed by his own money and co-investors’ equity, while a smaller part, “maybe up to a quarter,” will be borrowed.
He clarified that out of the $700 million of investments in 2015-2021, the share of debt financing was about a third, up to $250 million, of which 80% has already been repaid, but there was also a significant portion of private Western investors, either European or American.
“We really believe that 2025 is the first year during the war when we have much better macroeconomic predictability. We (Ukraine – IF-U) have fully received committees to finance our budget deficit for the whole of 2025 and almost the whole of 2026,” Fiala explained the readiness to resume investments.
He reminded that currently, taking into account the $50 billion financing of Ukraine under the ERA instrument from frozen Russian assets, the total confirmed financing of the country is $56 billion, against the need to finance the budget deficit in 2025 of $40 billion.
“That’s if there is no truce, but if it happens, we will need almost $10 billion less money,” said the owner of Dragon Capital.
He added that, given this situation, a fairly stable exchange rate and economic growth can already be predicted in 2025: by 3% if the war continues, and by 5-7% if it ends.
“We are not the only ones paying attention to the ceasefire negotiations. You can look at the following “barometer” – the prices of Ukrainian Eurobonds traded in London. These are dozens of foreign investors who are assessing Ukraine’s risks. The prices of these bonds have been rising for the last 2 years, but this growth has accelerated since October last year,” Fiala said.
According to him, new investors are assessing the Ukrainian risk through sovereign Eurobonds, focusing on yields of 13-14% per annum – this is the rate at which they are willing to buy the Ukrainian government’s debt.
Fiala added that investors are willing to buy corporate bonds of reliable Ukrainian companies such as MHP and Kernel with a yield of about 10%, and sometimes even 9%.
Dragon Capital is one of the largest investment and financial services groups in Ukraine, providing a full range of investment banking and brokerage services, private equity, and asset management to institutional, corporate, and private clients. The company was founded in 2000 in Kyiv.
