Ziad Abdelnour (financier)
Ziad Abdelnour (Arabic: زياد عبد النور; born 3 December 1960) is a Lebanese-born American investment banker, financier, activist, and author of "Start-Up Saboteurs and Economic Warfare". He is the president and CEO of Blackhawk Partners Inc, a New-York based private equity firm founded in 2008. He is also the founder & president of the Financial Policy Council (FPC), founding member and partner of OMV Capital, and chairman of the U.S Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL). In 2016, Ziad was named one of the 500 most influential CEOs in the world by Richtopia. Early life . Ziad Abdelnour was born on December 3, 1960 in Beirut, Lebanon. He is the son of Lebanese industrialist and former Member of parliament Khalil Abdelnour (1992-2000) and the nephew of the former financier and MP Salem Abdelnour (1960 - 1964 and 1972-1992). Abdelnour is the eldest child among five children. He took his early education in a private boarding school first in France and then in Switzerland. He graduated with a bachelor of science in Economics in 1982 from the American University of Beirut and received an MBA degree in finance from the Wharton School of Finance, University of  Pennsylvania. Career. Since 1997 Abdelnour has been chairman and a founding member of the United States Committee for A Free Lebanon, an activist organization lobbying the United States government to oppose Syria’s influence in Lebanon and supporting the Syria Accountability Act. He supported the neoconservative Middle East Forum, co-authoring a Forum study whose signatories included later George W. Bush administration officials Paula Dobriansky and Douglas Feith. Following graduation in 1984 from the Wharton School, Abdelnour worked as an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert where he was a Junk bond trader under Michael Milken. In 2008, after a  20-year career on Wall Street advising and investing in privately held companies, he founded his own investment company/private family office, Blackhawk Partners, Inc. engaged in the physical commodities trading and private equity businesses. Abdelnour has spoken several times on T.V and has written on wealth creation, physical commodities trading, and Middle East Geopolitical analysis and has been a regular panelist and speaker on private equity and venture capital topics at industry conferences nationwide. He is the author of '"Economic Warfare-Secrets of Wealth Creation"', and '"Saboteurs: How Incompetence, Ego, and Small Thinking Prevent True Wealth Creation"'. Abdelnour serves  as chairman of the Board of Hawkstorm Global, an elite executive protection firm focusing on High Net Worth Personal Security Protection, Asset Protection, High-Intensity Conflict Intervention, Investigations, Security Consulting, and Crisis Management. Abdelnour also serves on the advisory board of DPG Investments. He is also one of the founding members and a partner of OMV Capital, an advisory and funding platform engaged in financing multimillion real estate and projects on a global basis. SEC case settlement. In 2011, Abdelnour was targeted by the SEC for advertising/solicitation after he published an informational blog post on his Blackhawk Partners company  website talking about the mechanisms of private placement issues and how they work. On 7 May 2013, after two and a half years battle with no proven wrong-doing, the SEC and Abdelnour reached an out of court settlement, amounting to a $25,000 fine and a 5-year ban from the securities industry.