Ziad K. Abdelnour is an international dealmaker, trader, and financier with over 25 years of experience in merchant banking, private equity, alternative investments, and physical commodities trading. Since 1985, Mr. Abdelnour has been involved in over 125 transactions worth in aggregate more than $10 billion in the investment banking, high-yield bond, and distressed debt markets and has been widely recognized for playing an integral role in those three key market sectors. Mr. Abdelnour is currently President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc., a private equity "family office" that focuses on originating, structuring and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations, buildups, and growth capital financings.He serves on the board of TMax Capital, an investment management and specialty finance group that focuses on commodities securitization, proprietary structured products based on debt and assets, private equity placements, asset management, and other financial ventures that create synergistic value for its partners and portfolio companies He also serves on the advisory board of DPG Investments, a recognized premier multistrategy global merchant banking, alternative investment, management, and advisory firm; and FlatWorld Capital, a global private equity investment firm led by a team of dynamic investment professionals and entrepreneurs with over seven decades of experience in finding and structuring innovative and creative solutions to the challenges of global private equity investing. He is a regular panelist and speaker on private equity and venture capital topics at industry conferences nationwide.He is also founder and president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), founder and chairman of the Financial Policy Council, member of the Board of Governors of the Middle East Forum, and former president of the Arab Bankers Association of North America.Mr. Abdelnour holds an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in economics, summa cum laude, from the American University of Beirut.