OZAN M. OZKURAL

Ozan Özkural is the Founder and Managing Partner of Tanto Capital Partners, an international advisory, strategic capital, and merchant-banking platform operating at the intersection of investment banking, geopolitics, infrastructure, energy, healthcare, digital assets, and frontier-market opportunities. Through Tanto, he advises corporates, investors, family offices, sovereign stakeholders, and public institutions on complex cross-border transactions, strategic growth initiatives, capital raising, risk management, and geopolitical challenges.

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Prior to founding Tanto Capital Partners in 2014, Mr. Özkural built a distinguished career in international investment banking. Most recently, he served as Head of Emerging Markets at VTB Capital, with responsibility for the firm’s advisory, capital markets, financing, and commodities businesses across multiple regions and sectors. In this role, he was responsible for deploying and managing a multi-billion-dollar balance sheet across emerging markets.

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Before joining VTB Capital, Mr. Özkural spent more than seven years at Merrill Lynch in London (subsequently Bank of America Merrill Lynch), where he held senior roles across emerging markets, structured finance, leveraged finance, and special situations investing. He began his banking career within Merrill Lynch’s Global Structured Finance and Principal Investments division, focusing on complex financings, private equity transactions, and special situations across multiple asset classes and geographies.

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Over the course of his investment banking and advisory career, Mr. Özkural has advised on, structured, financed, or overseen more than US$50 billion of transactions globally across a broad range of sectors, including financial institutions, energy, infrastructure, industrials, natural resources, telecommunications, healthcare, and technology.

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Mr. Özkural holds a BA (Hons) in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham and is a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) and ACMA charter holder. He previously served on the Foreign Policy Leadership Council of the Brookings Institution between 2017 and 2023 and was a member of the William Pitt Group of senior business leaders at Chatham House.

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He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), where he serves on the Executive Committee of the Global Diplomacy Network and as Co-Chair of the Cambridge Executive Education Programme. Since 2024, he has served as a Member of the Board of Trustees of Işık University, part of the Feyziye Mektepleri Vakfı (FMV), one of Türkiye’s oldest educational foundations. In 2026, he was elected as an Independent Non-Executive Director of İş Yatırım Ortaklığı, a publicly listed investment company within the İş Bankası Group.

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Mr. Özkural is widely recognised for his work at the intersection of geopolitics, global capital markets, board strategy, and risk management. He is a frequent keynote speaker and commentator on these subjects and has appeared across leading international media, including Bloomberg and CNBC. He has also been interviewed by prominent global journalists, including Larry King.

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Since 2016, Mr. Özkural has served as a regular lecturer at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, contributing to executive education programmes focused on geopolitical risk, board governance, investment committee decision-making, and strategic risk management for global financial institutions and multinational corporations.