Bülent Gültekin is Associate Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. In the past, he served as Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Turgut Özal (1987-89) and Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz (1991). He was Undersecretary of State and the President of the Housing Development and Public Participation Administration (1988-89), Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sumerbank Holding A.S.(1988-89), Chief Advisor to the Plenipotentiary of Ownership Changes at the Ministry of Finance in Poland (1989-1990) and to the Minister of Privatization (1990-1991) in Poland. In this capacity, he designed the first Privatization Program of the Polish government.
He has advised Ministry of Finance in Indonesia, Governments of Egypt, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the State Property Fund of the Russian Federation, the Capital Markets Board of Turkey, Istanbul Stock Exchange, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Governments of Ukraine and Belarus. He was an advisor of the late President Turgut Özal, President Nursultan Nazerbaev, and President Islam Karimov. Professor Gültekin served as a senior advisor to the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is a director on the boards of the Grossman Currency Fund Ltd., GlobalNetFinancial.com.
He is the senior advisor and Chairman of the Board for the Global Euro Net Group, a private equity fund. He received his B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Robert College, Istanbul, MBA from Bogazici University, Istanbul, and a Ph.D. in Finance and Statistics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1976).