Doğuş Holding

Doğuş Group

Type	Private
Industry	Finance/Corporate
Founded	1951
Founder	Ayhan Şahenk
Headquarters	Istanbul, Turkey
Key people	Ferit Şahenk
Number of employees	40,000+
Website	https://www.dogusgrubu.com.tr/en

Doğuş Holding A.Ş. (Doğuş Group) is one of the top three largest private-sector conglomerates in Turkey, with a portfolio of 250 companies that cross industry verticals, including one of Turkey's largest banks, Garanti Bank, as well as high-end Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen dealerships, retail and food stores, construction companies, and tourism businesses. It also has major media interests, organised in the Doğuş Media Group.

Its foundations originally laid in 1951 when Ayhan Şahenk made his first investments in the construction sector and transformed Dogus Insaat into a leading builder of Turkish roads, ports and hospitals. The Doğuş Construction and Trade Ltd. Company was founded June 17, 1966, the same year Antur Tourism, Inc. was founded and Club Alantur in Alanya was acquired. He diversified into banking in the late 1970s. That is now the group's core business, accounting for 70 percent of the family's USD$3.6 billion fortune. But Sahenk kept expanding. While Turkey evolved from a state-controlled economy toward market capitalism in the 1980s, he branched into importing and joint ventures in automotive, tourism and food, with giants like Volkswagen, Sheraton and ConAgra.

In 1989 Ayhan Şahenk's son, Ferit Şahenk, returned to Istanbul with a bachelor's degree in marketing from Boston College. His father sent him to apprentice at Dogus' Garanti Bank. After eight years he moved to the holding company and has kept adding pieces. Beginning in 1998 he acquired two food retail chains and operated NTV, 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 Dogus Group hit USD$5.7 billion. In April 2001 Ferit took over Doğuş after his father Ayhan Şahenk died at the age of 72. 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.