Background

Şahenk received his Bachelors from Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA with a degree in Marketing and Human Resources in 1989. After graduation, Şahenk returned to Istanbul, where his father, Ayhan Şahenk (1929-2001), sent him to apprentice at Dogus' Garanti Bank. After eight years he moved to the holding company,and beginning in 1998, he has acquired two food retail chains and operated NTV by funding the expansion by selling part of the group's Garanti Bank to the public.

Understanding that top talent is essential to running a diverse group, he also created a recruitment division, Humanitas. Revenues for 1999 at privately held Dogus Group hit $5.7 billion. In May 2000, he instituted centralized back-office operations for Dogus' multiple banks and is doing the same for its auto dealerships. To its banking business, Şahenk added leasing, insurance and credit card cash-back schemes like those of Discover Card in the United States - financial services still uncommon in Turkey at the time.

The New head of Doğuş Holdings

He attended the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. At the age of 37, Şahenk took over his father's Doğuş (pronounced DOUG-oosh, literally "birth" in Turkish) Holding after Ayhan Şahenk died of a heart attack during April of 2001.

The net worth of the Şahenk conglomerate is around USD$ 2.5 billion, with a turnover for 2005 of USD$6 billion, employing about 18,000 people. He relinquished some control of the Garanti Bank, selling a quarter of the country's third largest bank to General Electric for $1.6 billion in 2004, which was regarded as an important step towards greater liberalization in the Turkish banking sector, which had been severely affected by the 2001 economic crisis. He also runs Turkish media properties capturing more than 10 percent of country's advertising market. Bankrolled Gallipoli, a movie about the seminal Turkish military battle against the Allied offensive. On January 28, 2006 Şahenk threw a reception during the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which was attended by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister of Turkey.