Ozan M. Özkural

Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Tanto Capital Partners

About Ozan M.Ozkural

Focused on strategic business development, corporate governance, risk and asset management, with an overarching expertise on global geopolitics and ESG investing. A diligent and inspiring international leader with an increasingly prevalent international presence and world-class communication skills that is also dual citizen (British, Turkish). An intermediary for a shifting paradigm, in a non linear world where only the principals have a seat at the table, helping decipher the impact and direction of the disruption and change coming our way.

Education

Ozan Ozkural was born in Turkey and raised in between Turkey and the United Kingdom, where he also obtained much of his academic education. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham, and then subsequently was qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant by CIMA (ACMA/GCMA).

Early Career

Having joined straight out of university to join the global management trainee programme of Unilever, Ozan Ozkural rose through the ranks quickly as a top percentile trainee, having been appointed as the business group finance manager of a major product category with a US$100m+ turnover by the age of 24.

Throughout his 3 years in Unilever, he took additional leadership roles in coordinating one of the largest strategic business restructuring initiatives of any firm in Europe and subsequently working as the factory finance manager for one of the key UK plants with over 700 workers as the member of the factory executive committee, at the same time working to get qualified as a chartered management accountant.

Investment Banking Career

In early 2005, Ozan Ozkural moved to one of the world’s top bulge bracket investment banks of the time – Merrill Lynch – having joined as a senior analyst within the Global Structured Finance & Principal Investments team.

Ozan Ozkural was responsible for the origination, structuring, and principal investments across multiple asset classes and sectors – focusing predominantly on mezzanine financing, distressed debt, non-performing loan trading, private credit, securitisation, and warehouse financing opportunities across the globe, with a balance sheet of over US$8.5bn. Having been promoted within 5 months of joining, Ozan Ozkural originated, structured, and managed transactions of over US$ 7bn across Europe, Emerging Markets, US, and Asia.

When the 2008 global financial crisis hit, Ozan Ozkural was one of the very few people that remained in the team that was downsized from 62 strong across New York and London down to 4 within a year, and throughout 2008 worked to de-leverage the teams overall position by over US$8bn.

Ozan Ozkural subsequently joined the Emerging Markets Debt Capital Markets team internally as a Vice President in 2009, with responsibility for the origination of debt capital markets transactions within Central Eastern Europe, Middle East, Turkey, CIS, and Africa. In this capacity,
Ozan Ozkural originated and executed over US$30bn of bonds and high yield debt instruments, including sovereign, financial institution, and corporate issuers. He was the key banker in creating a new borrowing market for banks and corporates in Turkey, having worked very closely with one of the largest banks in the Country (Akbank) in taking them to global debt capital markets with a benchmark 5 year US$1bn 5 year issuance, which was the first ever non sovereign issuance from Turkey that led to a subsequent total private sector issuance of over US$48bn since then over the past 9 years. In 2011, in addition to the CEEMEA debt capital markets responsibilities Ozan Ozkural was tapped to run the structured finance origination business in the region.

Launching Tanto Capital Partners And More

In late 2014, Ozan Ozkural co founded and became the Managing Partner of Tanto Capital Partners, a private credit fund and a boutique advisory firm. Leading a team of ex bulge bracket senior Managing Directors, Ozan Ozkural has established the firm as a well recognised and growing brand in the illiquid and mezzanine finance as well as distressed debt businesses over the past five years, where he has also been appointed to the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Leadership Council in 2017. As of January 2020, Ozan Ozkural has also negotiated a key joint venture agreement between Tanto Capital Partners and SF Sentry – a San Francisco based leading blue-chip fund and family office with over 30 years track record – where Ozan Ozkural also holds a key leadership position focusing on the private credit space.

Ozan Ozkural was also the only finance executive selected, amongst 52 global leaders in finance, to meet with the then newly elected Argentinian President Mauricio Macri at the 2016 Davos World Economic Forum, which was publicised by the President. He has been a regular participant in the Davos World Economic Forum ever since, where he was also a panelist in the TechPark Davos FinTech forum. During 2017, Ozan Ozkural was asked to join the Foreign Policy Leadership Council of the Brookings Institution, often considered to be the most powerful in the World, on which he still serves. He has also become an increasingly prominent financial and geopolitical commentator, having become one of the very few finance executives interviewed by the legendary talk-show host Larry King in 2014, and is a regular contributor to Bloomberg & CNBC around the globe. Ozan Ozkural is also frequently interviewed and contributes to global written press, having been featured on the front page of the New York Times interviewed by the 3 times pulitzer prize winning journalist Eric Lipton in 2016, as well as a a number of UK, Turkish, and European magazines. He is a regular contributor to the Businessweek TR magazine, having penned more than a dozen of it’s OpEd’s over the past two years and focuses his philanthropic efforts on education, where he has been a regular guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School over the past 3 years as well as a member of the faculty at the Bahcesehir University School of Business and Political Science where he teaches a post-grad Business Strategy class.

Ozan Ozkural is also a member of YPO (previously Young Presidents Organisation, www.ypo.org)

An avid Shotokan Karate practitioner, as well as an award winning movie producer (www.IMDB.com), Ozan Ozkural invests in sports, education, and art in his free time.