University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business Major: Finance, Minor: Economics

Boğaziçi University, MBA1997

Boğaziçi University, BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Levent Güntay is a faculty member in the International Finance Department at Özyeğin University’s School of Business, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Finance, Risk Management, and Data Science. He also serves as Director of the Center for Financial Engineering and Academic Director of the Financial Engineering Graduate Program at Özyeğin University. Previously, Dr. Güntay worked as a Senior Financial Economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), supervising systemically important U.S. banks (2009–2015), and as an Assistant Professor of Finance at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business (2003–2009). His extensive research on risk management, artificial intelligence in finance, credit scoring, fixed-income modeling, derivatives pricing, and machine learning has been published in journals such as the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, and Journal of Financial Services Research, significantly contributing to the Basel III regulatory reforms following the 2008 global financial crisis. Dr. Güntay holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Maryland, College Park, and received his B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and M.A. in Business Administration from Boğaziçi University.

Refereed Publications:

• “Testing for Systemic Risk using Stock Returns” with Paul Kupiec, Journal of Financial Services Research, 2016, Volume 49 Issue 2-3, 203-227
• “Inside Debt, Bank Default Risk and Performance During the Crisis” with Rosalind Bennett and Haluk Unal, Journal of Financial Intermediation, 2015, Volume 24, Issue 4, 487-513 (Best paper award semifinalist, Financial Management Association Meetings)
• “Corporate Bond Credit Spreads and Forecast Dispersion,” with Dirk Hackbarth, Journal of Banking and Finance, 2010, Volume 34, Issue 10, 2328-2345 (Best paper award, Swiss Society for Financial Market Research Conference)
• “Pricing the Risk of Recovery in Default with APR Violation,” with Dilip Madan and Haluk Unal, Journal of Banking and Finance, 2003, Volume 27, Issue 6, 1001-1025 (Best paper award, Washington Area Finance Conference)

Working Papers:

• “Proving Approval: Dividend Regulation and Capital Payout Incentives” with Stefan Jacewitz and Jon Pogach (Best paper
• award semifinalist, Financial Management Association Meetings, 2015) under review at the Review of Financial Studies
• “A Novel Approach for Implied Recovery Estimation”
• “Estimation of Implied Recovery and Loss Given Default Rates: A Survey”
• “Type of Terrorism and Investor Sentiment” with Barış Çağlar
• “The Valuation of Trust Preferred Securities”
• “Blockholders, Debt Agency Costs and Legal Protection,” with Andrew Ellul and Ugur Lel (Top 10 download in the Social
• Science Research Network)
• “Callable Bonds, Interest-rate Risk and Supply Side of Hedging,” with Nagpurnanand Prabhala and Haluk Unal
• “Investor Sentiment and the Relative Valuation of Stocks and Corporate Bonds,” with Dirk Hackbarth (Inquire Europe
• Research Grant)
• “Pricing Defaultable Callable Coupon Bonds”

FERM 503: Applied Fİnancial Economics, FERM 508: Machine Learning and Deep Learning