Synergy Capital 2025 Review and Outlook

Season’s greetings and warm wishes for 2026 from all of us at Synergy Capital!

At a Glance:

•  $1.5 Billion Deployed Across 3 Funds, 31 Investments, and 14 Exits

•  $1 Billion Fund III Launched in March 2025

• Achieved $715 Million First Close

• $326 Million Deployed from Fund III on 8 Investments

•  More Than 100% of Fund I and over 50% of Fund II’s Drawn Capital Returned to Investors

•  Over $350 Million Capital Generated from Exits and Income in 2025

•  Synergy Awarded Top Score of 5-Star Rating by the UN-PRI

2025: A Flagship Year for Synergy Capital

Our defining milestone in 2025 was the launch of Synergy Capital’s Asia focussed Fund III, a $1 billion flagship private credit vehicle focused on infrastructure and industrials across Asia. The fund reached a $715 million first close in under two months, with commitments from both existing and new global LPs, underscoring confidence in our platform and strategy.

Alongside the launch, we continued to deploy and realise capital in our prior funds and maintained a record of zero credit losses. These results were delivered against a challenging global backdrop.

Global markets navigated overlapping shocks, from geopolitics and tariff frictions to policy fragmentation, rapid AI-driven disruption and heightened scrutiny of private markets. Inflation eased and several central banks began cutting rates, improving financing conditions, but cross-currents in FX, regulation and supply chains kept risk premia elevated and liquidity uneven. We viewed this volatility as turbulence on a long runway, while our approach remained anchored in disciplined underwriting, selective deployment, and readiness to act where temporary dislocation met durable fundamentals across Asia’s infrastructure and industrial value chains.

Fund Progress and Capital Deployment

In 2025, we deployed $326 million across eight investments, broadly in line with our average annual pace over the past three years. Our deployment was anchored by a $100 million investment in GEMS Education in the UAE, the region’s largest private K-12 operator, alongside structured capital for Shapoorji Pallonji in India (including participation in the country’s largest ever private credit transaction), hydro and gas power assets acquired from GMR, a private equity investment in Saurashtra Fuels in Gujarat, and a growth deal in a Singapore-based offshore services provider. Since inception, Synergy has deployed around $1.5 billion across 31 investments, with 14 exits completed. In 2025 alone, the funds generated over $350 million in capital from exits and income. Fund II, launched in 2022, has returned more than 50% of drawn capital to investors. Our partial exit from JSW Cement during its IPO reflected how Synergy’s structured-capital approach positions sustainability-focused businesses to access public markets successfully. Fund I has returned over 100% of capital to its investors. We have maintained a record of zero credit losses since inception, reflecting conservative structuring and

hands-on portfolio management. During the year, we added four senior professionals with experience across steel, power, infrastructure finance, investor relations, and communications, enhancing our ability to originate, structure and manage complex opportunities. Fund III Allocation

Asia’s Evolving Credit Opportunity

Asia offers a rare combination of high growth and early-cycle asset creation at scale. Forecasts for 2026 put

developing Asia at over 4.6% growth, with India at roughly 6.5%, pointing to an asset-building, urbanising and industrialising phase while the West remains in a late-cycle environment of saturation and tighter credit.

Developing Asia’s cycle is underpinned by the state and corporates building industrial and infrastructure assets, from transport and power to digital networks.

Asia accounts for nearly half of global GDP, yet private credit is still early in its development, with conservative banks and shallow debt markets leaving many mid-market borrowers underserved. Asian credit markets are roughly 75% bank-dominated, compared with about 32% in the US.

We target this opportunity through local relationships, operational insight, and structuring depth, focusing on howgovernance, collateral enforcement, and counterparties behave in practice rather than in models. This approach helps originate and scale transactions that global capital often misprices or cannot access.

Our strategy is concentrated on infrastructure and industrials, where Asia’s capital gap is both the largest and the most durable, and where private credit can price risk with an edge. Developing Asia is estimated to require around $1.7 trillion in annual infrastructure investment through 2030, with India alone needing over $450 billion.

In parallel, legal and restructuring frameworks in key Asian markets have been strengthening, and global LP allocations to private credit in the region are rising, which together support more reliable enforcement, larger transaction sizes and a deeper opportunity set for disciplined lending.

Sustainability

Sustainability remained integral to Synergy Capital’s investment process in 2025, with the firm publishing its

second Sustainability Report and adopting a more data-driven approach to ESG across the investment lifecycle. More than 95% of our portfolio is aligned with the sustainable transformation of industrial and infrastructure sectors through efficiency gains, cleaner technologies and stronger governance. We maintained a 5-star rating in the latest UN PRI assessment, with top scores in Policy and Governance, Private Equity and Private Debt, and continued to engage portfolio companies on governance, safety, disclosure and community impact. Looking Forward

Going into 2026, Synergy Capital expects global risk and cross border tensions to persist, with continued volatility and policy uncertainty. Despite short-term noise, the structural direction is unchanged: Asia’s need for capital, infrastructure and sustainable industrial capacity continues to rise, and private credit has become a core channel for financing this growth. Our positioning builds on the discipline exercised through 2025, with selective deployment and timely exits

underpinned by a firm focus on tangible cash flow, providing a strong foundation for Fund III. Synergy expects to continue realizations across Fund II while scaling deployment in Fund III, prioritising senior, secured exposure over headline growth.

We will remain focused on structured, cash-generative industrial and infrastructure assets in Asia, where the need for long-duration capital continues to exceed what local banks and public markets can provide. These global geopolitical cross-currents of volatility and unpredictability are also creating opportunities, with potential for significant transactions, partnerships and collaborations as the private credit market deepens.

In such a market, complacency is the risk to avoid, which for Synergy Capital means staying vigilant, stresstesting our views, sharpening underwriting, deepening diligence and tightening structuring so that our portfolio remains resilient across different scenarios. For inquiries and more information, visit us at www.synergycapital.co.uk

Synergy Capital's investment management company, Synergy Management (DIFC) Limited, is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).