Kydonia Continental Security is a private specialty firm providing bespoke protective services and risk counsel to institutional clients and to a small number of private principals. The work of the firm is conducted in the manner of a confidential counsel.
Kydonia Continental Security Holdings Ltd is a specialty firm constituted in MMXXVI under the regulatory umbrella of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, with administrative office services provided from the Republic of Cyprus.
The firm was established by a continental private investment partnership of long standing in healthcare, insurance and specialty finance, in adjacency to its Insurance & Protection vertical. It operates, however, on a self-contained basis, with a separate operating leadership, a separate governance architecture, and a separate professional discipline.
We provide protective services and risk counsel to institutional clients — sovereigns, family offices, professional firms, private investment partnerships — and to a small number of private principals who have come to us by personal introduction. We do not solicit clients. We are not, in any meaningful sense, a market participant.
The work of the firm is conducted as the work of a confidential counsel: at the request of the client, in the personal interest of the principal, within the limits of the law, and never further than is necessary.
"A protective firm worthy of the name is one which speaks rarely, advises plainly, and acts only when advice has been insufficient."
— from the firm's founding memorandum, MMXXVIFive practice areas, exercised in concert when the engagement requires it and never in isolation when it does not.
A protective firm is judged less by what it can do than by what it knows not to do. Four principles, simply expressed, are the standing instruction to every member of the firm.
The cost of an avoided incident is invisible to the principal and material to the firm; we ask the principal to accept, on the firm's testimony, that the investment in anticipation is the most rewarding investment the firm makes on his behalf.
A protective detail that announces itself loudly invites the very interest it was meant to deter. A risk assessment that concludes in alarm is one that has failed to understand the circumstance. The firm holds itself to a discipline of measured response.
Decisions belong to the principal, to the institution, to the household. The firm offers advice in the manner of a confidential counsel — clearly, in writing, and without solicitation of further engagement. The principal remains free, at every stage, to disregard the advice given.
The firm publishes no client list, releases no testimonials, accepts no awards which would require disclosure of an engagement, and does not respond, in any form, to enquiries from members of the press concerning the identity of the firm's clients or the nature of its engagements.
The firm's standing professional arrangements, set out in summary form. A fuller statement is communicated to engaging principals on request.
Kydonia Continental Security Holdings Ltd is incorporated in Abu Dhabi Global Market and conducts its operations under the standing oversight of the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority in respect of those activities which fall within its remit.
The board of the firm is constituted on a small, conservative basis. The Chairman holds the role on an interim basis pending the executive-search process which is, as at the date of this communication, in active conduct under the direction of the firm's founding partnership. We expect to communicate the appointment of the firm's permanent chief executive in the course of MMXXVI.
The firm's professional appointments — statutory audit, legal counsel, compliance — are made on the long-standing terms applied by its founding partnership across the family of companies under its care. The discipline of those terms is, in the firm's view, a discipline of consequence.
The firm's data-protection, counter-party-diligence and clinical-ethics policies are, mutatis mutandis, those of its founding partnership and are made available to engaging principals on request.
The firm maintains two offices. We do not maintain satellite branches, representative offices, or business-development outposts in any other jurisdiction.
Engagements with the firm are accepted, as a rule, only upon personal introduction by a party already known to the firm — a previous principal, a senior professional adviser, an institutional counter-party of standing.
An enquiry, by correspondence, is acknowledged by a senior member of the firm within five business days. A first conversation is conducted, in person, in a discreet setting agreed with the prospective principal. The firm does not, save in exceptional circumstance, conduct first conversations by electronic medium.
Fee arrangements are set out in writing at the commencement of every engagement. The firm operates on a retainer-and-engagement basis; spot engagements are accepted on a limited basis at the firm's discretion. The firm does not accept engagements on a contingency, commission or referral-fee basis under any circumstance.
The firm's professional indemnity, errors-and-omissions, and abduction-and-extortion insurances are placed on the firm's behalf by Pemberton Marsh & Co. Ltd, of London, on terms which the firm regards as adequate to the nature of its practice. Certificate of insurance is made available to engaging principals on request.