Holdings · Structuring · Development
We don't buy companies. We take them on.
GFX is an investment holding company. We take stakes in mid-market European businesses, handle their structuring and administration ourselves, and stay on the board until the value is there.
The difference
What a fund does, and what we do instead
A fund buys, appoints a manager, sets an exit horizon, and comes back quarterly to read figures someone else prepared.
We do something else. The company enters a perimeter where legal structuring, bookkeeping, tax and compliance are handled in-house, by the same teams, across two jurisdictions. Its managing director does not spend six months explaining the business to four providers who never speak to each other.
We are not investors with a back office. We are a back office that invests.
Three disciplines
Holdings
We take majority or significant minority stakes in two kinds of company: profitable, cash-flow-positive businesses looking for a growth relay, and businesses whose value does not show in the accounts — underused assets, an underserved market, a succession to organise. Different timelines, different levers.
Structuring
Choice of vehicle and jurisdiction, holding architecture, sequencing of contributions, tax treatment of flows. We build for ourselves what others bill as advice, which forces us to live with our own judgement calls — the best guarantee of restraint there is.
Development
After we come in: governance, real monthly reporting, cash discipline, systems brought up to standard, and day-to-day administration taken over by the group. Closing is not the end of the work. It is the start.
Who we talk to
Founders and shareholders of mid-market European companies
A succession to prepare, a partner to buy out, growth that needs capital, or simply the wish to hand over without dismantling what was built.
We invest our own funds and those of our consortium. We do not manage assets for third parties, we offer no investment products, and we make no public offering.
The consortium
Companies and assets across several countries
GFX brings together companies and assets in several countries, built on Swiss and Luxembourg structures and on teams that have kept their own books since 2012.
In practice: a transaction can be carried wherever it makes sense without changing counterpart; the entity created for it is administered in-house, not outsourced; and compliance — know-your-client, source of funds, due diligence — is handled up front, because it is daily business here rather than a box ticked at the end.
In-house
What “in-house” actually covers
Not a promise of proximity — a list. Bookkeeping and annual accounts. VAT returns in both jurisdictions. Payroll and social charges. Consolidation. Intercompany reconciliation. The file the auditor asks for, prepared before they ask it.
The same teams have been doing this every month since 2012, for the companies we hold and for clients outside the group. That is why it is routine here, and a project everywhere else.
How we work
We say no early.
A file that will not clear the bank will not clear it six months later either. Saying so at the first meeting costs one appointment. Finding out mid-structuring costs a year.
We write down what we do.
Every step produces a dated document. It is what the bank, the auditor and the tax authority will ask for anyway.
We promise no returns.
Not to you, not to anyone. What we can show is transactions, and what became of them.
Investors
Investor enquiries
We publish no terms, no figures and no deal documents on this site. Conversations with investors happen on introduction, after identification, and under a confidentiality agreement.
GFX invests its own funds and those of its consortium: no third-party asset management, no investment product, no public offering.
Tell us about your company
Five fields: your name, the company, the country, approximate revenue, and what you are trying to do. Every message is answered by one of us.