UP Financial USA

UP Financial USA

Vasilios Gerakis established UP Financial USA in New York as a financial services firm focused on private credit origination, structured finance, and advisory mandates. The firm operates at the intersection of institutional capital placement and direct lending, serving as both an arranger and a principal investor in select transactions. Its New York headquarters positions the firm within the largest US private credit market, where it competes with a dense ecosystem of boutique investment banks and specialty finance platforms. UP Financial USA concentrates on middle-market credit opportunities, spanning asset-backed lending, commercial real estate bridge financing, and structured note programs. The firm offers a dual-track model: it advises borrowers on capital structure and capital raising while also deploying its own balance sheet into originated deals. This approach — common among European merchant banks but less prevalent among US-registered investment advisors — allows UP Financial to align incentives across placement and principal activities. Target sectors include real estate development finance, working capital facilities for operating businesses, and specialty finance assets such as litigation finance and trade receivables. Gerakis runs a lean operation, structuring each transaction through a network of institutional limited partners, family offices, and credit funds that co-invest alongside UP Financial's balance sheet. The firm does not publicly disclose its total assets under management or placement volumes. Its organizational footprint, as of 2025, remains concentrated in New York without additional offices. No publicly reported fund closings or major strategic hiring events have been identified from verifiable sources in the last 24 months. The structural distinction lies in UP Financial's merchant-banking posture: the firm is neither a pure advisory shop nor a blind-pool credit fund, but a principal-led platform where sourcing, structuring, and co-investment sit under one roof. This arrangement creates a direct-link incentive model — the team invests own capital into the same securities it places with external allocators, which differs from the fee-first structure of registered investment advisors.