The firm

Twenty-four years of independent financial advice in Lebanon and the region — built on one conviction: that good companies deserve better financing than the banks alone can give.

About Orion

Orion Financial Solutions was founded in 2002, at a time when Lebanon’s capital markets were embryonic and its companies depended almost entirely on bank loans. Its purpose was to propose developmental and restructuring solutions to Lebanese corporates and financial institutions — and to act as advisor and facilitator for financial products and transactions that no one else in the market offered.

Its services range from operational consultancy to the restructuring of debt in distressed situations, and from the design of alternative financing to the sale of a company to the right investors. Orion has built a reputation as a provider of alternative finance to local and regional companies and financial institutions: fixed-income securities, asset-backed securities and securitisation, Islamic financing including sukuk, factoring, and financing triangulation — always grounded in the advisory groundwork that every successful transaction requires.

The collapse of the Lebanese banking system in 2019 made that conviction a necessity. Since then Orion has worked where the need is greatest: valuing and restructuring family manufacturers, building a factoring channel and a trade-finance fund to replace frozen bank credit, publishing independent analysis of the crisis and its way out, and bringing machine-learning credit scoring to a market whose companies remain invisible to foreign lenders. The firm works in Arabic, English, French and Spanish, from Beirut, across the Levant, the Gulf and North Africa.

Twenty-four years

2002
Orion Financial Solutions is founded in Beirut by Nicolas Photiades and registered with the Ministry of Finance (no. 319707), to provide the financing and restructuring advice that local and regional banks did not.
2002–2006
Five Lebanese banks are advised on capital raising, preferred share issues, Basel II and restructuring; the Banque du Liban on loan-classification and debt-to-property swap rules; the Union of Arab Banks on Basel II, ratings and risk management.
2011–2018
Corporate mandates multiply: acquisitions and disposals in automotive, food and retail; a board seat in an Egyptian hotel group; a factoring structure that cut a Jordanian solar consortium’s cost of capital by 500 basis points; business development for two international rating agencies.
2020
The partners become senior expert consultants to USAID’s Trade and Investment Facilitation project, implemented by DAI — an engagement renewed every year until 2026.
2022
Launch of the monthly Investment Contextual Report. Levant Trading Solutions is established to broker factoring for Lebanese manufacturers.
2023–2024
First credit-insured export-factoring transaction. Agreement with Ellinas Finance to co-manage the Lebanon Trade Finance Support Fund in Cyprus.
2025–2026
Orion Scoring & Rating brings machine-learning credit scoring to banks, companies and insurers. New mandates in Libya, for a nationwide government energy project and for municipal solar. Publication of Sixteen Sovereigns, One Scale.

Partners

Nicolas Photiades

Founder and managing partner

A seasoned investment banker and financial advisor with more than thirty years’ experience in London, Paris and the MENA region, Nicolas founded Orion Financial Solutions in 2002. He specialises in debt restructuring, funding diversification, debt and equity capital markets, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions, and has extensive experience in privatisation programmes.

Throughout his career — within major financial institutions and at the head of his own advisory firm — he has originated and executed a substantial number of financing and advisory transactions in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia.

Nicolas worked as a credit analyst at a major US rating agency and pioneered rating advisory in the region, advising a major Riyadh-listed corporate on obtaining its rating in 2011. He has sat on the board of an Egyptian hotel and property group, written on Lebanese water and privatisation policy since 2005, and is the author of Orion’s 2026 series on the Arab sovereigns below investment grade.

Dr. Ghassan Chammas

Partner

Ghassan is an experienced finance and banking business developer and a financial engineer of investment products, with extensive experience in banking and investment on both the industry and the regulator side. He has chaired board and management committees, including risk, liquidity and asset placement, and credit facilities committees.

A proponent of Islamic finance, he advised the Banque du Liban on Islamic financial affairs and has advised the boards of several Islamic banks on product innovation, corporate governance and risk management.

Ghassan holds a PhD in Finance from Erasmus University Rotterdam — his dissertation, on concentration measures in investment portfolios, became a book — and advanced degrees in finance, business analytics, engineering and marketing. He has held senior positions at a central bank and an international credit rating agency, founded Orion Scoring & Rating, and co-founded Levant Trading Solutions and its trade-finance fund. He teaches at the American University of Beirut, the University of Balamand, Université Saint-Joseph and the Real World Risk Institute.

Vision

To be the premier financial advisory firm in Lebanon, focused on small and medium enterprises, the restructuring of financial institutions, and the development of domestic capital markets.
To guide SMEs into the domestic fixed-income and equity capital markets.
To establish proper financial and operational governance in SMEs, financial institutions and public-sector entities.
To advise on economic and financial restructuring at the level of SMEs, financial institutions and government.
To provide research and scoring on domestic corporates, financial institutions, equities and fixed-income securities — now delivered through Orion Scoring & Rating and the research library.
To launch principal-investment and recapitalisation vehicles for the corporate and financial sectors — begun with the Lebanon Trade Finance Support Fund.