Hüsnü Özyeğin

Hüsnü Özyeğin
Born	1944 Izmir, Turkey
Alma mater	Oregon State University, Harvard University
Occupation	Founder & Director of FIBA Holding
Net worth	US$2.7 billion (April 2015)
Children	Murat Ozyegin, Ayşecan Özyeğin

Hüsnü Özyeğin (born 1944) is a Turkish businessman in the finance sector, and a self-made billionaire. He is the owner of FIBA Holding, a group of mostly financial companies in Turkey including Fibabanka and Credit Europe Bank. He has a net worth of US$2.7 billion as of 2011.

The son of a doctor, Özyeğin was born in 1944 in Konya, Turkey. He graduated Robert College, an elite academy in Istanbul in 1963, and claims that he went to the US with just a thousand dollars in his pocket. There, he studied civil engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, USA, receiving a BS degree. Being more interested in finance, he attended the School of Business at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and obtained an MBA.

Following his return home after three more years in the USA, Özyeğin was offered a post in Pamukbank, which belonged to his schoolmate, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet. In 1977, at the age of only 32, he was appointed general manager of this bank and he held this position until 1984. Then he transferred to Yapı ve Kredi Bankası to become its general manager, a much larger bank in Turkey acquired that year by the same friend. There he succeeded in leading the money-losing bank to a profit over the next two years.

Özyeğin led Yapı ve Kredi Bankası until 1987, when he decided to establish his own bank, the Finansbank at the age of 43. He expanded it to a bank with more than 200 branches operating in nine countries out of Turkey, mostly in Europe. He later founded several finance companies and brought them under the Holding Fiba, which has around 8,500 employees in 20 companies. Over the next few years, he invested in high-demand industries such as real estate, energy and retail, building condominiums and shopping centers across the main domestic business districts. In 1996, he entered the retail business purchasing the supermarket chains Gima, Endi, Spar and Greens. Furthermore, Özyeğin signed a franchising contract with the British retail chain Marks & Spencer, and then purchased also the Sakura Bank.

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