Expert resume of Cyrus Ardalan

Chair of OakNorth Bank, Chair of LXI REIT PLC, board member and Chair of the audit and risk committee at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a Trustee of the Charities Aid Foundation, chair BlendNetwork and co-founder of the Humanitarian Finance Forum (HFF). 

Cyrus Ardalan is currently Chairman of OakNorth Bank a unicorn UK challenger bank, Chairman of LXI REIT PLC, a FTSE 250 closed-end real estate investment company, a board member and Chair of the audit and risk committee of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness innovations an international foundation financing independent research projects to develop vaccines against infectious diseases, a Trustee of the Charities Aid Foundation a leading UK and international charity and chairs its financial services subsidiary. He is also the co-founder of the Humanitarian Finance Forum (HFF), established to help mobilise increased private sector funding and knowledge sharing for humanitarian and social purposes.

Prior to his retirement, Mr Ardalan spent 15 years at Barclays Bank as a Vice Chairman with a number of management roles which included heading investment banking for EMEA, public sector investment banking and the banks Government Relations and Public Policy group. Prior to Barclays he was at Paribas as President of Paribas Corporation the banks US broker dealer and subsequently the global head of bonds. He started his career at the World Bank as an economist and became a Division Chief in the treasury overseeing the banks borrowings in a number of markets and creating and managing the banks derivatives activities.

He has also held a number of other non-executive roles. These have included Chairman of Citigroup’s international investment banking subsidiary, Citigroup Global Markets Limited, Chairman of the International Financing Facility for Immunization which is a multilateral development agency, Chairman of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) representing over 500 global banking institutions, a board member for the Dubai International Financial Centre and a Senior Adviser to Alvarez and Marsal and the Rock Creek Group.

Mr Ardalan has a bachelor’s degree from University College London and a postgraduate degree from Oxford University in economics.