Author Archives: Ziad K Abdelnour

About Ziad K Abdelnour

Ziad K. Abdelnour is President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc., a New York based private equity ”family office” that focuses on originating, structuring, advising and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations, buildups, and growth capital financing's in companies and projects based both in the US and emerging markets.

Vote for Trump

A lot of people have brought up the fact that they won’t vote for Trump if he’s the eventual nominee.

 

I just want to put something in perspective.

 

Justice Scalia’s seat is vacant. Ginsberg is 82 years old, Kennedy is 79, Breyer is 77, and Thomas is 67. Nowadays, the data shows that the average age of a Supreme Court retirement or death occurs after 75.

 

These are 5 vacancies that will likely come up over the next 4-8 years. The next President will have the power to potentially create a 7-2 Supreme Court skewed in their ideology.

 

 

For More:http://ziadabdelnour.net/the-coming-balance-of-power

Thank you,

Ziad K Abdelnour Inspirational speech about Donald Trump

This week the Financial Policy Council has its 2016 Summit in the Bahamas. Ziad K Abdelnour talks about Donald Trump and his following.

 

Ziad K. Abdelnour is a Wall Street Financier, Author, Philanthropist, Activist, Lobbyist, Oil & Gas Trader & President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc., Blackhawk Partners, Inc., is a private “family office”

 

Hedge Fund Performance and Regulation

The hedge fund industry has taken quite a hit over the past year, leaving institutional investors fairly disappointed with ROI expectations. Preqin, the industry’s leading investment analytics company cited its 2015’s aggregate 2.02% return as the worst since 2011. Preqin further reported that 44% of fund managers reported failure to meet return objectives. The hedge fund industry is no lightweight; globally the industry accounts for over USD3 trillion assets under management. Poor hedge fund performance is a strong indicator of how unstable the overall financial system has become, even though the industry is not considered a market maker. Both large and boutique hedge funds that pursued single strategy objectives bore the brunt of poor performance.

Hedge funds that focused on equity, macroeconomic, managed futures and relative value strategies had the most fund closures for last quarter 2015. Funds with multi-strategy, event-driven strategies and credit strategies had the best overall performance, and a larger number of fund launches. On a positive note, the entire industry saw an increased transfer of capital flows from family offices and high-net-worth individuals in 2015. Evidently, private wealth investors have waning confidence in public capital markets.

 

For More: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/hedge-fund-performance-regulation/

 

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Our Investment criteria and Interests for 2016 and beyond

Dear Friends:

 

Following my joining the board of Elate Partners, www.elateinvest.com – a Chinese investment group backed by large institutional, strategic and wealthy individual investors from China – a lot of you have been asking me about the kind of deals Elate would be interested to invest in in partnership with Blackhawk.

 

Without further delays, here is the short list as per below

Guidelines

  •  Western Investment:
    • Hard asset-based deals that have “intrinsic values” of their own, for example mines, oil field, certain real estate;
    • Businesses with potential synergy with China;
    • Generally shy away from businesses that rely on services for revenue due to a lack of expertise
  • China Expansion:
  •  Technology-based and other businesses that could be transferred to China sometime in the future (regardless whether the US operation is kept intact or not);

For More: http://ziadabdelnourblackhawk.com/our-investment-criteria-and-interests-for-2016-and-beyond/

Thank you,

The Activist Investor: A True Ally of Corporate Governance

Activist investors: Publicly listed companies fear them. Corporate governance pundits generally do not trust them. Retail investors quietly applaud them, and most laymen do not understand them. However, it is clear that in today’s complex corporate world, we need them. Activist investors may be the only players in the game that can effectively “Occupy Wall Street”.

We have entered the twilight zone when it comes to corporate governance. The zone where many Boards bury their head in the sand when it comes to breaches in compliance, as in the case of HSBC and the tax evasion scandal of February 2015. Certain Boards passively bow to the dictates of executive management, throwing all accountability on the corporation-as-entity, with no individual responsibility. All other stakeholders, from shareholders, to suppliers, to workers, to humble taxpayers are left to peck at what is left of net worth after the share price dives, and are left to fork out money for regulation and reconstruction.

To be fair, in the recent past activist investors have been noted for short-termism. Short-termism is the process by which an activist fund may coerce target companies to conduct strategies that may yield high profit in the short term, but that may be detrimental to company performance in the long term. For instance, it is common practice for activist funds to demand significant reduction in Research & Development activities; yet, R&D is needed for long term competitive and innovative advancement.

 

For More: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/activist-investor-true-ally-corporate-governance/

Thank you,

THE WORLD IN A (CRACKED) NUTSHELL: THINGS HAPPEN

Investors and people in the business world need to be aware of world events and the impact they have on their business outcomes. Recent events of which we should all be aware are:

• The Russian-Turkish Rivalry
• The Apparent Steadying of the European Economy
• The Death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
• Prison Riot in Mexico City
• The Northwards Spread of the Vika Virus
• Trade Dispute between Russia and Ukraine
• Rapid Changes in the Syrian Civil War
• Economic, Security and Political Developments in Central Africa
• Growing Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
• The Weakening of the Indian Rupee
• Growing Stresses between North and South Korea
• Poor Performance of Japan’s Economy
• The Persistent Decline of Oil and Gas Prices
• American Political Chaos

 

For More: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/world-cracked-nutshell-things-happen/

Pissing Away Money Down the R&D Rat Hole

Let me start by saying that I am a physicist and have been involved with many of the leading U.S. research facilities over the years — Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Laboratories, just to name two.  I also directed the Socrates Project under the Reagan administration.  So the quick knee-jerk reaction to the title that “I don’t understand research and development or the value of technology” holds no water at all.  Please don’t even try to argue this point.

Research and development (R&D) does not equate to a competitive advantage in the marketplace or on the military battlefield.  Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a worthwhile pursuit.  Totally agree.  But it is conceptually flawed and detrimental to the objective — being competitive — when companies and governments use the need to increase economic and military might as justification for higher expenditures on R&D.  But yet this is the rapidly rising battle cry among the leading thinkers in Congress, the Pentagon, academia, think tanks, and the press — “Raise R&D funding levels, and America’s future will be secured.”  How so far from the truth.

One highly critical set of decision makers who suffers from this R&D is the key to competitiveness thinking is the leadership in the office of the Secretary of Defense.  But this was all avoidable.

 

ForMore: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/will-stop-blindly-pissing-away-money-rd-rat-hole/

Thank you,

When Will We Stop Blindly Pissing Away Money Down the R&D Rat Hole?

When Will We Stop Blindly Pissing Away Money Down the R&D Rat Hole?
By Michael C. Sekora – Past Director of the Socrates Project, President of Quadrigy, Inc. affiliated with Operation U.S. Forward

 

 

Let me start by saying that I am a physicist and have been involved with many of the leading U.S. research facilities over the years — Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Laboratories, just to name two.  I also directed the Socrates Project under the Reagan administration.  So the quick knee-jerk reaction to the title that “I don’t understand research and development or the value of technology” holds no water at all.  Please don’t even try to argue this point.

Research and development (R&D) does not equate to a competitive advantage in the marketplace or on the military battlefield.  Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a worthwhile pursuit.  Totally agree.  But it is conceptually flawed and detrimental to the objective — being competitive — when companies and governments use the need to increase economic and military might as justification for higher expenditures on R&D.  But yet this is the rapidly rising battle cry among the leading thinkers in Congress, the Pentagon, academia, think tanks, and the press — “Raise R&D funding levels, and America’s future will be secured.”  How so far from the truth.

 

ForMore:http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/will-stop-blindly-pissing-away-money-rd-rat-hole/

Investors Can Boost Their Cybersecurity

Security Essential for Financial Transactions Online

Now that the Cyberworld is upon us, most of us do most, if not all, of our financial transactions online. Long gone is the day when most of us paid our bills by check or delivered a check to our brokers to invest for us. Now we pay our bills online, either on the biller’s Website, or on our bank’s Website. We don’t write checks – we transfer funds. We rely on the security of the Web site with which we are dealing to protect the security of the transaction. Most of us make sure that the “HTTPS” designation is at the beginning of the address for every Website on which we conduct transactions or share sensitive information. We maintain security and privacy settings on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social Websites where we publish. We have firewalls for our computer systems, our personal computers, and our home networks. We have anti-virus software and run it rigorously. We have our Outlook set for appropriate levels of security and use spam settings to segregate anything that looks like spam, knowing that in the spam box we can see the REAL addresses behind the links in emails.

 

We know enough not to click on any link in any email, instead copying and pasting the address into our browsers. We have our browsers set for appropriate levels of security and privacy, and use a secure browser like Firefox or Tor. We have our networks set for security against invaders. We understand that the weakest link is usually the employee sitting at his keyboard, and have established suitable policies, procedures and penalties regarding cybersecurity for our employees. We use, and require our employees to use, “strong passwords” and change them often.

 

For More: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/investors-can-boost-cybersecurity-back-basics/

Thank You,