Ozan Özkural

Bio:

Prior to founding Tanto Capital Partners in 2014, Mr. Özkural had a distinguished career as a senior investment banker, having spent most of his career at one of the most renowned global institutions – Merrill Lynch – out of London, serving clients across the globe.  By the time he founded Tanto Capital Partners - a boutique investment bank in London, focusing on global commodities, structured financing, energy, and energy transition - Mr.Özkural had been running the Emerging Markets business for VTB Capital with responsibility for the firm’s advisory, fixed income/equity origination, commodities and financing businesses across all sectors, investing a multi billion dollar balance sheet. 

Prior to joining VTB Capital in 2012, Mr.Özkural spent over seven years at Merrill Lynch London (subsequently BofA), where in his last position he was responsible for the wider emerging markets high yield and structured financing businesses. Mr.Özkural started his investment banking career in the Global Structured Finance and Principal Investments team of Merrill Lynch, and was responsible for structuring and managing special situation financing, and private equity transactions across multiple sectors, asset classes, and regions. Throughout his investment banking career, Mr.Özkural originated and has overseen the management of over US$50bn of transactions across the globe. He spent his pre-investment banking career at Unilever UK, having joined as a management trainee in 2002, serving as a Unilever UK Foods Division Business Group Finance Manager before leaving to join Merrill Lynch in 2005. 

Mr.Özkural holds a BA in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham (2001), and is a chartered management accountant (ACMA/GCMA charter holder). He has been appointed to the Foreign Policy Leadership Council of the Brookings Institution –a Washington D.C. think tank- in 2017 (ranked the Worlds most powerful think tank), and has also taken on a role as the William Pitt Group member of the UK based global think tank Chatham House in 2023, and also served on the board of a leading European fintech firm between 2020 to 2023. 

Mr.Özkural was elected to YPO in 2020, and serves on the Executive Committee of the YPO Global Diplomacy and Deal Networks, and is the Co-Chair of the Cambridge Executive Education programme. He also serves as a Member of the Board of Trustees of Isik University in 2024, a part of the Feyziye Mektepleri Vakfi (“FMV”), one of the oldest Turkish education foundations active since 1885.

He is widely considered as an expert in geopolitics, global macroeconomics, investment and board strategy. He is a high profile Key-Note Speaker on these subjects, has been interviewed on these subjects by leading journalists (including Larry King), and continues to be a regular contributor for Bloomberg, CNBC, BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review as well as periodically lecturing at the University of Cambridge.