Lion Finance Enters FTSE 100 as Georgia and Armenia-Focused Lender

Lion Finance held a lavish reception at the British Museum in central London’s Bloomsbury district to celebrate its entrance into the FTSE 100 index in March 2026. Guests in black tie posed for pictures on a red carpet before enjoying champagne and canapés amid Egyptian artefacts. Georgian dancers and Armenian singers provided entertainment at the event.

Archil Gachechiladze, 46, chief executive of Lion Finance, gave his first profile interview at the nearby Rosewood hotel in central London. “Georgia and Armenia are both small countries from a region that is very easy to ignore,” Gachechiladze said. “But if you start looking into it, you find a lot of positives about it — its economy, its people, its culture and so forth.

A London Stock Exchange ceremony was held last week for Archil Gachechiladze and his colleagues to ring the market close. Lion Finance was first listed in London in 2006 with a market capitalisation of £230 million. 7 billion.

The bank changed its name from Bank of Georgia to Lion Finance after the 2024 acquisition of Ameriabank. It employs 12,600 people and operates largely in Georgia and Armenia, with some operations in Belarus where it owns a Minsk-based bank. Lion Finance has a 38 per cent market share of lending in Georgia and a 22 per cent market share of lending in Armenia.

Lion Finance's first-quarter profits were 585 million Georgian lari (£160 million), a rise of 14 per cent. Its return on equity is 27 per cent, double that of rival FTSE 100 banks such as Barclays. The company's share price rose by more than 80 per cent over the past year.

5 per cent the year before last. “Georgia and Armenia are under-discovered,” Gachechiladze said in perfect but heavily accented English. “As you look into it, you’ll find that it’s a very interesting, dynamic, growing market.

And then when you look at our particular company, we are dynamic, in a dynamic market. ” Georgia Capital is the largest shareholder in Lion Finance with a 16 per cent stake. The banking operation was spun out in 2018, creating Georgia Capital which is listed in London.

Archil Gachechiladze became chief executive of the bank in 2019. 8 million) retention share bonus last year. He won a bronze medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1996.

At age 16 he participated in a one-year student exchange programme in a high school in Mississippi, where he delivered pizzas to support himself. Archil Gachechiladze studied economics in Tbilisi and won a scholarship to study at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 2004.

He worked at Lehman Brothers in its private equity arm in London before returning to Georgia on a flight on August 20, 2008.

Russia invaded Georgia that August. He joined TBC Bank as a research analyst and later became deputy chief executive. Archil Gachechiladze joined Bank of Georgia in 2009 and took on a number of senior roles.

He ran a Georgian utilities business owned by Bank of Georgia starting in 2016. Georgia gained independence in 1991 following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The country experienced a GDP drop of 70 per cent in the early 1990s.

Gachechiladze’s parents, both chemical engineers, lost their jobs and reinvented themselves — his mother sewing for clients and his father working three accounting jobs. “The joy of discovery in mathematics is unmatched,” Gachechiladze said. “You don’t take anything for given and you always ask yourself, why is that the way it is?

He has five children, four of whom were born over the last nine years, with the most recent born four weeks ago. Bidzina Ivanishvili was sanctioned by America in 2024 for undermining democracy in Georgia for the benefit of Russia. When asked about reports that he lobbied the British government not to follow with its own sanctions, Gachechiladze said the rumours were “completely groundless” and that he does not get involved in supporting or opposing sanctions.

The Times reported that he prefers to focus on the bank and potential future deals in eastern and southeastern Europe or central Asia.