About Us
Ionian Capital is an independent Athens-based boutique advisory firm with senior advisors based in London, Los-Angeles and New York that focuses on:
- advising global capital (Private Equity firms, Hedge Funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Family Offices) for potential transactions in South Eastern Europe, (mainly in Greece, Turkey) in the Balkans and Central Europe,
- advising companies in raising debt or equity for existing or new projects.
Services
- Deal Origination and Sourcing
- Transaction Structuring and Monitoring
- Capital Raising
- Distressed Investing Advisory
- Restructuring / Turnaround Advisory
- Mergers and Acquisitions
Meet the Team
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Spyros Martsekis
Founder & Managing Partner
Spyros Martsekis is the founder and the Managing Partner of Ionian Capital. He is also a senior advisor to Pelican Point Capital Partners Merchant Bank in California. Spyros has extensive business experience for almost 20 years in different industries and practices. Before founding Ionian Capital he was the Managing Director and head of Alvarez & Marsal’s Greek office and part of the European Growth Practice (Central/Eastern Europe & Greece/Turkey) and also founding member of the European Shipping Advisory Practice. Prior to that he held senior positions with KPMG (where he was responsible for the Corporate Finance and Private Equity Advisory Practice), Oxygen Capital, and Pantheon Airways (where he was Chairman of the BoD/CEO). Spyros was also the Head for Greece/Cyprus for HSBC Private Bank (based in London), and was a senior associate for five years with Morgan Stanley. He has a bachelor from the Athens University of Economics & Finance, and holds an MBA from Columbia University on an Onassis Foundation scholarship.
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Mark Florman
Senior Advisor
In 1992 Mark created Maizels Westerberg & Co., one of the first independent merchant banks. He went on to specialise in the restructuring of failing companies. Mark has advised a wide variety of governments and industries. He is also an entrepreneur, having founded businesses in technology, media, transportation, publishing, private equity, banking and leisure, as well as think tanks, school building and international development programmes, charities and political campaigns. He has been active in politics for 15 years. In 2004 he created Build a School, developing a new approach to rural community development in Africa’s poorest communities and is active on a number of African-related initiatives. He co-founded the Centre for Social Justice, the UK think tank with a focus on poverty and welfare. The CSJ published Breakthrough Britain, proposing reforms to welfare, social care, education, criminal justice and the third sector; new areas of work include slavery and gang culture. In 2009 he founded 8 Miles with Bob Geldof. In 2011 he founded the Mayor’s charity the Legacy List, to drive community development in Stratford following the Olympics. Mark believes that trust and a wider duty is essential in business, and with government and civil society, business should work more to help improve the lives of communities. He defined the term “ERR”, to measure the external impact business has on society. He has recently helped launch the Million Jobs campaign in the UK. In his capacity as CEO of the BVCA he has been providing economic, industrial and financial policy advice to governments and regulators. In 2012 he co-founded the DNA Summit, to bring together the world’s most creative and innovative people with a view to working on solutions for the world’s poorest communities. Principle positions include: Chairman, CSJ; Strategic Adviser and Industry Ambassador, BVCA; Chairman, Spayne Lindsay LLP; Special Adviser, 8 Miles; Patron, Build Africa; Chairman, The Legacy List; Expert Committee Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund.
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Demetrios Boutris
Senior Advisor
Demetrios Boutris has served in senior State and Federal Government positions, including Commissioner & CEO of the California Department of Corporations, Legal Affairs Secretary & Counsel to Governor of California, Interim President & COO of a NY Public Benefit Corporation, and U.S. Trade Official in the White House. Demetrios Boutris, an M&A lawyer by training, has served on and advised numerous corporate and public service boards, including Wedbush Securities as chairman of its corporate governance and nominating committee, Virgin Charter (a Richard Branson company) as chairman of its compensation committee, and the California Alumni Association.
Demetri Boutris has also been a Vice President of several operating companies of MacAndrews & Forbes Holding Company (controlled by Ronald Perelman). He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (Economics; honors, Phi Beta Kappa) and the Harvard Law School, and is a member of the California, Washington, DC, and US Supreme Court bars. -
Mark Bandak
Senior Advisor
Mark has over 23 years experience in private equity, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to co-founding Sandbox & Co., an investment house focused on education and media, Mark was Managing Director of InvestCorp and The Blackstone Group, where he spent 13 years. Previously, he worked at Millbrook Capital, New York City Economic Development Corp. and Smith Barney Inc. Mark graduated from Columbia University (Hons, Engineering) and Columbia Business School (Hons).
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Polly Preventza
Senior Advisor
Polly Preventza is a Managing Director at DelMorgan & Co., with over 13 years of professional experience as an investment banker advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions. Polly Preventza is also a Founder and Managing Partner at Navi Capital Partners, a Los Angeles based private investment firm that specializes in investing in profitable lower-middle market companies in Western United States. In her career, Ms. Preventza has advised clients on over $60 billion of M&A and financing transactions, working with both public and private companies and with a particular focus and expertise in the healthcare industry. Prior to joining DelMorgan, Ms. Preventza was the founder and President of MPL Advisors Inc., a boutique investment banking advisory firm based in Los Angeles, California. Prior to founding MPL Advisors, Ms. Preventza was a Principal at the Bank of America / Merrill Lynch Investment Banking group in New York, specializing in M&A of healthcare companies. Her industry expertise spanned all sectors of the industry, including specialty pharmaceutical companies, medical devices and healthcare services companies. Ms. Preventza has worked on a wide range of transactions, including Cardinal's spinoff of CareFusion ($4.7Bn), WellPoint's divestiture and sale of its Pharmacy Benefit Management business unit to Express Scripts ($4.7Bn), Alpharma's sale and defense against the hostile bid by King Pharmaceuticals ($1.6Bn), and Boston Scientific's multiple divestitures, several leveraged buyouts, and successful capital raises for companies in the healthcare, technology, telecommunications, real estate, consumer finance and gaming industries. Prior to joining Banc of America/Merrill Lynch, Ms. Preventza worked at Morgan Stanley Corporate Finance in Los Angeles and at Lehman Brothers Investment Banking in New York. Ms. Preventza holds a Ph.D. and a Master's of Science in Electrical Engineering from Caltech University in Pasadena, with a minor concentration in Finance, and a B.A degree in Electrical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens, Greece with highest honors. Ms. Preventza has also completed all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program.
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Ike Suri
Senior Advisor
Ike Suri is currently the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Pelican Point Capital Partners LLC, a Merchant Bank in Newport Beach, California. Prior to Pelican Point Capital, Ike has served as a CEO, Chairman, board member and adviser to private and public companies and continues to advise companies as an adviser, principal & owner/operator. Ike is a "serial entrepreneur" and founding charter member of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE- South Coast). He served as a board member of Trilennia Group, a mid-market merchant banking firm and a member of the Turnaround Management Association (TMA). Ike is a Co-Founder and was Co-President and CFO for Options Group, a leading Wall Street-based executive search and consulting firm with offices in 11 countries. Ike served as CEO and Chairman of Paradise Multimedia, Inc., a spin-off acquired from Phillips Corp. of NA. He also served as Chairman and CEO of Pacific Rim Entertainment Inc., a prime-time animation production company of which he sold select assets to Disney.
Ike originated structured and integrated acquisitions in 6 technology consolidation/roll-ups in the networking spectrum and related industries. From networking technologies in Ethernet, Token Ring, switches, routers, fiber optic codecs (applications) and wireless synthesizers, his team acquired these companies from companies such as Raytheon, Rockwell Network Systems, Westinghouse, Meret Optical, Sciteq, Relialogic and Phillips.He was part of a leadership team for acquisitions that helped build Sorrento Networks. Sorrento Networks reached a market capitalization of approximately $1.6b as a listed Nasdaq company.
Ike was instrumental in helping the company acquire 8 companies in the roll-up strategy and further spun off 2 subsidiaries as separately listed public companies called Entrada Networks & DPI. Ike is also Managing Director of Azemuth, Inc., a Suri family office making principal investments since the mid-1990's. His primary focus has centered in building enterprise value via investments and by Mergers & Acquisitions. He has a long history of working with leading organizations across various industry sectors including Financial Services, Real-Estate, Information Technology, Med-tech, Health Care, Food and Beverage and Social Media.
Ike attended Delhi University's Sri Ram College of Commerce and further completed Undergraduate and Graduate course work in Finance and Marketing at Rutgers University. -
Zoe Vassiliou
External Senior Financial Analyst
Zoe is equipped with over 18 years experience in analyzing and valuing listed and non-listed companies in a wide range of business sectors in Greece, while working as an analyst and holding senior management positions – Head of Analysis Department- in various brokerage firms in Greece. She has also served as a member of the Investment Committee at the Hellenic Pension Mutual Fund Management Company. From 2009 to 2011 she worked as a special adviser to the Minister of Economy, Competitiveness and Shipping and later to the Minister of Labor and Social Security. Her portfolio indicatively included: overseeing sectoral economic policies, numerous restructuring plans and she served as the project manager for the reform of the Investment Law, which is the national institutional framework for regulating investment incentives in Greece. While at the Ministry of Economy she dealt with the reform of the institutional and administration framework of the Pension Funds and other social policy reforms. She also served for 2 years as the appointed by the State, independent, non-executive member of the Board of Directors of United Textiles Co. where she oversaw its restructuring plan under State guarantee. Zoe holds a degree in Economics from the University of Athens and is a certified Portfolio Manager by the Hellenic Capital Market Commission.
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Nicholas Georgiadis
Senior Financial Analyst
Nicholas Georgiadis is an external senior financial analyst at Ionian Capital and a certified financial analyst by the Hellenic Capital Markets Commission with over 20 years of professional experience in the valuation of companies in the banking, industrial and IT sectors. He is the co-founder of Valuation & Research Specialists (VRS) with prior experience as Director of Equity Research in large security firms (Piraeus Securities and Omega Securities), undertaking the valuation of listed as well as non-listed companies in Greece, either for reporting, IPOs, or merger & acquisition purposes.
He was also member for three years of Standard & Poor’s governance score team in Greece. Nicholas holds a Bachelor’s degree from Athens University of Economics & Business (Greece), graduate and postgraduate degrees from Harvard University (US) and ICMA Center, Reading University (UK), and a PhD on corporate valuation from University of Macedonia (Greece). -
Maria Papadopoulou-Tzara
Financial Analyst
Maria is a certified financial analyst. Her expertise is based on financial analysis and financial modelling. She has worked as a financial analyst for banking institutions as Piraeus Bank and HSBC and for brokerage and research firms as Alpha Finance and VRS. She studied at the Athens University of Economics and Business at the Department of Business Administration and completed her postgraduate studies at the Department of Finance at the Cass Business School-City University. She is a Certified Financial Analyst by the Greek capital market committee and she has also been certified as a Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA) and as a Certified European Financial Analyst (CEFA).
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