John Halle Gutfreund (14 September 1929 – 9 March 2016) was an American banker, businessman and investor. He was the CEO of Salomon Brothers Inc, an investment bank that gained notoriety in the 1980s. Gutfreund turned Salomon Brothers from a private partnership into a publicly traded corporation which started a trend in Wall Street for investment companies to go public. He became an icon for the excess that defined the 1980s culture in America. In 1985, Business Week gave him the nickname "King of Wall Street".
