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 left investment banking to set up Tanto Capital Partners - a boutique investment bank in London, encapsulating asset management, advisory, and multi family office business’ under one roof - Mr.Özkural had been running the emerging markets origination business for VTB Capital for 2 years, having been responsible for all of the firm’s advisory, fixed income/equity origination, commodities and financing businesses across all sectors. In this capacity, Mr.Özkural was responsible for managing and investing a balance sheet of over US$2.5bn. Prior to joining VTB Capital in early 2012, Mr.Özkural had 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 securitization/warehouse financing, special situation financing, real estate, 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 serves as an independent non-executive director on the board of the fast growing European fin-tech firm OpenPayd, based in London since 2020. Mr.Özkural has been elected as a member of YPO (previously called Young Presidents Organisation) since 2020, and serves on its Executive Committee as a board member of the YPO Deal Network, and is the Chair of the YPO Cambridge Executive Education programme. Mr.Özkural is widely considered as an expert in global geopolitics, emerging markets and financing, where he has been interviewed on these subjects by important journalists such as Larry King, and he is a regular contributor for Bloomberg, CNBC, BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review as well as periodically lecturing at the University of Cambridge.