Luke Oliver
Managing Director, Head of Climate Investments; Head of Strategy, KraneShares

Luke Oliver leads the KraneShares Climate solutions business building innovative products that provide access to unique markets within this growing investment universe. In addition to curating the firm’s climate, carbon and impact strategies, Luke works closely with clients to educate on the asset class and client implementation strategies. He is a regular industry commentator on TV, press, and online media and is responsible for digestible research on climate topics.

Prior to joining KraneShares, Luke built and ran the $21bn US XTrackers ETF business at DWS (formerly Deutsche Asset Management) where he pioneered currency hedging, onshore China, and more recently ESG strategies which were among the first to recognize the need for value-aligned portfolios. Prior to this, he was the portfolio manager of $16bn in commodity assets across the PowerShares DB Commodity ETF suite. Luke has a reputation for building strong, diverse teams, creating profitable businesses, and bringing innovative solutions to market. His 20-year financial career also included time on the capital markets sell-side.

This diverse experience has allowed Luke to identify the most powerful emerging trends in the investment landscape. “Pricing carbon emissions and decarbonizing the global economy is the single greatest challenge, and opportunity, we will ever be presented with. I have no doubt this will be our mission for the next 20 years and it must not fail.”.

Oktay Kurbanov
Partner, Climate Finance Partners

Oktay leads research and analytical efforts at Climate Finance Partners (CLIFI), leveraging his 25 years of experience in research driven investment management.

Oktay started his career at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as an analyst. In 1998, he was one of the original 14 people at AQR when the firm launched its flagship Absolute Return Fund. Oktay worked to develop and enhance research, portfolio optimization, and trade generation infrastructure, focusing on derivatives and allocation strategies across a variety of asset classes. As AQR became a major global investment manager, Oktay established and led the portfolio implementation function to manage a complex variety of investment products. He became a Principal in 2005, and in his latest role, he was a co-head of AQR’s Portfolio Implementation.

In 2020, Oktay retired from AQR and joined Climate Finance Partners. By applying his experience in derivatives, research, and analytics, Oktay contributes to the firm’s mission to deliver innovative financial products in the climate space and environmental finance.

Oktay is a member of the Advisory Board for the Center for Sustainable Business at NYU. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance and Statistics from NYU’s Stern School of Business and B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Michigan.