A unique team of highly skilled professionals.

Tom leads our Financial and corporate PR, media and IR practices and conducts ongoing PR campaigns. Adept at linking ongoing media relations programs to clients' overarching IR strategies, he takes the global perspective into account. He has particular expertise in M&A, divestitures, bankruptcy, restructuring and crisis communications and a very extensive knowledge of the financial services industry, global financial markets, economics and worldwide political developments.

Tom's approach is to link an exhaustive understanding of clients' lines of business with a variety of effective media and thought leadership opportunities worldwide. Superlative client service is the ultimate objective of his programs, pivoting off an extensive knowledge of media outlets around the world and of those focusing on various industries.

On the corporate side, Tom served as Director of Communications for PwC's Financial Services Industry Practice - responsible for PR, advertising and thought leadership initiatives for the Capital Markets and Treasury; Banking; Insurance; Investment Companies and Real Estate divisions.

Earlier, Tom was the Director of PR at Shearson Lehman Brothers International in London and VP of PR in New York headquarters for Corporate and Public Finance Divisions, where he raised the firm's institutional profile and orchestrated a major press outreach effort aimed at launching the firm's presence in Japan.

On the agency side, Tom was SVP of PR at Siegel & Gale, focusing on the new media. As SVP of Media Relations at Gavin Anderson & Company, he focused on capital markets and IR. At Robinson, Lake, Lerer & Montgomery, he was a VP of the M&A and crisis communications team advising on significant and global transactions.

Tom has an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies - Washington, D.C. and Bologna, Italy and a B.A. from Union College - summa cum laude. Fluent in German and Italian, he speaks French, Spanish and Turkish as well.

Nazan is TMC's Partner in charge of the Capital Advisory Practice encompassing capital, corporate finance, investments, JV's, M&As, divestitures, public, private or syndicated, distressed and stressed credit, restructurings, CLO's, and LBO's.

A former senior Wall Street investment banker, she has first-hand expertise in corporate public/private or sovereign credit, investments and portfolio management. Having completed the JPMorgan management training program at the outset of her career, and lived through many credit cycles, she gained hard-to-match skills, making her one of the most highly qualified credit and corporate finance experts in the market.

Nazan financed governments, US, European and EM corporations of virtually all industries, sizes and credit ratings at lead manager level, structured and placed debt issues varying between $50 million and $25 billion each. Closely familiar with most major US and international corporations, buyout firms, industries, issuers and investors, she has intimate knowledge of the market dynamics and players, as well as a large digital Rolodex.

She has coached the C Suite of Fortune 500 and private equity firm leaders for road shows, investor meetings, addressed investor concerns and questions, advised the C Suite on business plans and presentations.

As Director of US Bank Loans at Lazard Freres, she focused on distressed debt, was a founding member of the Salomon Brothers Bank Loan Group (Citigroup), responsible for underwriting, structuring, placement and trading private debt of $35 billion face value.

During her 12-year tenure at Chase, Nazan was first-handedly involved in most major and risk-on corporate financings and syndications of investment/non-investment grade, stressed/distressed debt, M&A finance, LBOs and restructurings. She placed over $100 billion in assets, regularly held the highest sales record and developed Chase's automated syndications tracking system, the very first in the US.

Nazan has an LL.M. in Corporate Law from New York University Law School, an M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies and a Law Degree from Istanbul Law School. She also attended the Institute de Hautes Etudes Internationales of Geneva University in Switzerland. Fluent in English and Turkish, she speaks Italian, Spanish and French. A member of the Istanbul Bar Association, she also is an alumnus of Üsküdar American Academy in Istanbul.

Özgür is a Wall Street investment banker and Senior Consultant of TMC's Capital Advisory practice. He is a senior credit risk executive and testifying expert with hands-on execution experience in credit risk analysis, credit due diligence, credit underwriting, loan and deal review, distressed debt, capital restructuring, liability management, workouts and liquidations.

He has worked on many leading complex debt transactions, covenant disputes, CLO loan reviews, restructuring analyses, valuations of companies, distressed and special situations, hard-to-value credit instruments, structured deals, workout assessments, esoteric and illiquid transactions and securities assessment of quantum of damages, reporting and transactional purposes and in dispute and litigation matters.

His experience includes credit and bond ratings and credit assessments of commercial and industrial companies, sovereign and public finance–municipal entities, financial institutions, banks, broker dealers, and asset-backed and structured securitizations. He also performs credit / bond rating analysis and provides recovery, workout and restructuring analysis. He has been retained in and submitted expert reports and provided oral testimony in numerous state and federal court cases as well as domestic and international arbitration cases before the FINRA, ICSID, ICC, JAMS and PCA. He is also a qualified arbitrator appointed as sole arbitrator and co-arbitrator under numerous arbitral institutions.

Özgür's consulting firm experience includes Charles River Associates, where he was a VP and Officer of Financial Markets and was a Managing Director of Financial Markets & Securities at Berkeley Research Group.

Previously he was the Head of Credit Methodology at GE Capital and a Director at Moody's, rating US and international companies as well as sovereign institutions.

Özgür holds a PhD in finance from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, and an LLM from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland as well as an MBA in Finance and BSc in Electronics Engineering.

Melody is TMC's independent senior advisor for the Training Practice. She custom-designs media, presentation and other types of persuasive message training programs, helping prepare spokespersons to be more effective in media interviews with trade/specialized, business/financial and general media as well as for outreach to employees, customers, regulators, investors, and other stakeholders. After leading the training practice at MSL, she was the lead and sole communications trainer at FleishmanHillard.

Her financial services clients include the C-suite at Ford for investor events; Visa, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, EY, Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group, PaineWebber, CSFB, CNO Financial, USAA, Chubb Insurance, NAIC, Putnam, GE Energy Financial Services, Alix Partners, Performics, Bogan Associates, GETCO Alternative Trading System (dark pools), Principal Financial Group, Huntington Bank, Puerto Rico's Economic Development Agency (Fomento), Hershey, ID Analytics (Lifelock), On Deck, EasyKnock and Blispay. CD&R and Harvest Partners, True Ventures.

Previously, Melody worked as a journalist in the US and overseas, with assignments ranging from television news anchor and producer to freelance newspaper reporter. Her articles have been published in Newsday, Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Cosmopolitan, and What's On In London, among others.

She is a guest lecturer on media relations at Columbia University's Graduate School for Nonprofit Management.

Melody graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where she double majored in English and International Relations. She later attended New York University's graduate program in Cinema Studies.

Steve is an experienced corporate and financial communications strategist with a strong background in thought leadership, media relations and internal communications. For Forbes Insights, he interviewed dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs for KPMG's annual CEO surveys. Steve also authored several white papers on behalf of EY.

As an EVP at Hullin Metz & Co., Steve provided strategic counsel and media relations support to WL Ross & Co. for Ross's landmark acquisitions in the steel, coal, textiles, auto parts and subprime lending industries. He was a senior member of the M&A communications team for Newmont Mining's contested acquisition of Australia's Normandy Mining (vs. South Africa's AngloGold) and Canada's Franco-Nevada Mining. He then arranged a “CEO Q&A” with Institutional Investor, which later named the three-way merger the “2002 Deal of the Year.”

He led account teams for Human Genome Sciences, Dalton Investments, NCR, PharmAthene (bio defense start up), Shire Pharmaceuticals, Conway Del Genio Greis & Co. (turnaround management), Capital Fund Management (France's largest hedge fund) and the M&A Advisor.

As U.S. Surgical Corporation's Senior Director of Media Relations, Steve was the senior communications counsel to C-suite executives and chief company spokesperson. He advised management on corporate positioning, financial communications, M&A, and crisis and issues management. During three major downsizings and the company's takeover by Tyco International, he shaped external and internal communications strategies.

Steve was a VP at Hill and Knowlton, Inc., and Bozell Public Relations (now Weber Shandwick). His clients included Allergan Optical, BF Goodrich, Burlington Industries, Clifford Chance, Dow Chemical, DuPont, GTE, Herman Miller, Kodak, Minolta, Monsanto, Northrop, Procter & Gamble, RJR Nabisco and The Society of the Plastics Industry.

Steve earned a B.A. in communications from Iona University, an M.A. in communications from Fordham University and a certificate in IR from the University of Connecticut. He also is a certified Dale Carnegie public speaking coach and has been a guest lecturer on strategic communications at New York University, Fordham, Iona and Baruch College.

Brian Rafferty is the Founder and Chief Executive of Taylor Rafferty, a leading cross-border investor relations, stakeholder, and capital markets communications firm he established in 1982. For more than four decades he has specialized in helping companies develop and execute global investor relations and capital markets strategies, with a disciplined emphasis on programs that create measurable economic value.

He has advised some of the world's premier corporations on strategic capital markets campaigns, institutional targeting, message development, IPO and transaction support, and cross-border communications, pioneering many of the best-practice tools and processes now standard in the field. After a period as Senior Advisor, he returned as President and CEO in 2012 and continues to lead the firm's work in helping clients achieve clear capital markets goals.