Founders
Dnieper Capital has been founded by two partners, Michael Maltzoff (43) and Sergey Grachov (41). Both have significant experience of buy-side investment and company acquisitions, especially in Ukraine.
Sergey Grachov has 12 years’ experience in the investment business. Sergey Grachov was one of the founders of one of the biggest financial-industrial groups in Ukraine, with an enterprise value of several billion dollars. He was head of a team responsible for all acquisitions made by the group. The value-added of these acquisitions (conservative current market value plus net cash out less cost of acquisition) is in excess of $1 billion. He was also in charge of maintaining relations with domestic and foreign clients, The State Property Fund and other governmental authorities of Ukraine. Sergey graduated from the Technological Institute of Food Industry in 1989.
Michael Maltzoff, with 19 years experience in the investment business, started his career in strategy consultancy (The LEK Partnership in London, which has a strong M&A focus); he later worked for County NatWest Ventures, a leading buy-out firm. After his MBA at INSEAD he started investing in East Europe with Invesco plc in February 1994, working with legendary investor Roy Bracher. Michael first acquired a controlling stake in an Ukrainian company in 1995 as manager of The East Europe Development Fund. That acquisition was done with the assistance of Sergey Grachov as advisor, and the two principals have been close friends and colleagues ever since. The East Europe Development Fund, with a net asset value of over $400 million in 1997, was the best performing fund in the world at the time (source: Micropal). Michael was later head of the East European team for Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity between 1997 and 2001 and then for 4 years was one of the business partners of Energy Standard Group, a large business group in Russia and Ukraine with interests in electricity distribution, metals and power engineering.
In their respective careers in Ukraine and Russia, Sergey and Michael fully planned and executed the control acquisitions of over 20 significant companies and were directly responsible for their subsequent turnaround and management; in a number of cases, their sale as well. Their experience includes in addition a further 10 transactions where there was minority control, defined as a blocking minority 25% stake and/or a board seat. Here is a link to a table with the team’s investment experience. Thus, the principals have undertaken most types of acquisitions, from privatizations to start-ups to corporate purchases, and have good experience of management, best practice corporate governance and capital budgeting processes.
The two principals have a very hands-on and detail-focused approach to investments and company management, and invest a great deal of time into relations with company managers. At the same time, they have both operated at the highest business and political levels in Ukraine.
The principals actively pursue other interests. For example, Sergey is a successful music producer and musician and is highly respected on the music scene in Kiev. Michael is much involved with The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and practices Classical Jujutsu.
