RITAM POSLA Tonći Korunić

Guest Tonći KorunićHosted by Lidija KiseljakMay 3, 2026

Tonći Korunić

About this episode

What you'll hear in this conversation

Tonći Korunić, a partner at Interkapital, has spent decades navigating the volatile currents of capital markets, from the optimistic dawn of Croatian independence to today's unprecedented financial shifts. His firm, born from a youthful ambition to build a regional investment powerhouse, stands as one of the few independent players to have endured multiple global crises. This conversation offers a rare look inside the journey of an investment house that not only survived but thrived by identifying market gaps and embracing innovation. Korunić shares how Interkapital, against the backdrop of a changing industry landscape, built a regional presence and democratized access to sophisticated investment strategies. Readers will consider how deep market focus and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom can shape a lasting enterprise.

Insights from the conversation

What to take from this episode

Interkapital began with a youthful dream of becoming "the Goldman Sachs of the Balkans," but its actual launch was timed precisely with Croatia's pension reform in the early 2000s. A grand vision can provide direction, but a business truly takes root when it aligns with specific, structural market changes, like a new regulatory landscape or a shift in capital flows.

Recognizing early that "Croatia was too small," Interkapital quickly expanded its operations across Southeast Europe, becoming a regional hub for major Western banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. For specialized services in smaller national markets, growth often means becoming indispensable across a wider geography, rather than trying to dominate a single, limited one.

Before the 2008 crisis, fifty independent investment houses operated in Croatia; today, only five or six remain, while most others integrated into banks. Korunić states that independent firms are "far more creative and better at developing the business because they are exclusively focused." When a business model thrives on agility and deep specialization, independence from a larger, diversified parent company can be a critical advantage for long-term survival and innovation.

Interkapital pioneered a robo-advisory platform called Genius, which allows individuals to diversify investments into sophisticated asset classes, previously reserved for the wealthy, with stakes as small as 500-1000 HRK per month. Technology can break down traditional barriers to entry in financial services, creating new markets by making advanced tools and strategies accessible to a much broader base of smaller investors.

Korunić recounts that throughout his career, every major financial crisis—from the Russian crisis of 1998 to the dot-com bubble, 9/11, and the GFC—had a unique cause, defying the textbook "oversupply" pattern. Market crises are rarely uniform; relying on past patterns for prediction is less useful than cultivating an adaptive mindset and a deep understanding of the specific, often novel, triggers of each new downturn.

During the COVID-19 panic in March 2020, even highly liquid assets like US and German government bonds became unsellable, with investors preferring pure cash to any instrument. Extreme market panic can shatter even the most fundamental assumptions about liquidity, revealing how quickly confidence can erode and how fragile even the most robust financial instruments can become.

The current bond market situation is described as unprecedented in 30 years, differing significantly from the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Even for seasoned market participants, the nature of financial stress continues to evolve, demanding constant re-evaluation of established playbooks rather than simply applying lessons from the most recent crises.

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