About Sava?Özcan

Savas Ozcan is an experienced banking and investment advisory professional of over 40 years standing. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Engineering and M.Sc. degree in Geostatistics, both from the University of Leeds, UK. He began his professional career at the industrial multinational Atlas Copco before changing course to become a banker and joining Citibank. He then worked at Tekstilbank (now ICBC Turkey) as an Assistant General Manager and became a Board Member of Osmanli Bankasi, Turkey's oldest bank and a subsidiary of Banque BNP Paribas. After the bank merged with Garanti (now Garanti BBVA), he became the CEO and a Board Member of Bank Ekspres, a medium-sized bank specializing in corporate and investment banking (now Burgan Bank). He has served as a Board Member and consultant to several large corporations in the manufacturing, textile, construction materials, food production and tourism industries and has acted as a financial and investment advisor on large scale multinational real estate development projects in various countries. Over the years he has advised on several M&A transactions.

In recent years, Savas has rediscovered an appetite for the food industry and nutrition. He has completed diploma-level courses in Nutrition Science; Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Macronutrients and Overnutrition, Micronutrients and Malnutrition with the Open University, UK, and Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

He has also put this knowledge into practice with a 5 years stint at one of the largest ready-to-eat food manufacturing groups.

In 2025, he successfully completed two additional diploma-level courses: "Nutrition and Health: Human Microbiome" offered by Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and "Food Fermentation: The Science of Cooking with Microbes," an online program by HarvardX, an initiative of Harvard University.

Alongside a lifelong passion for sailing, Savas has taken part in marathons and ultramarathons in Turkey and internationally.