Paul Kazarian

Paul B. Kazarian (born October 15, 1955) is an Armenian-American investor, philanthropist, and former investment banker.

He is the founder, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of Japonica Partners, a private equity hedge fund.

Paul B. Kazarian was born on October 15, 1955, the son of immigrants from Armenia.

His grandparents were Charles and Agnes Kazarian; both of them escaped the Armenian genocide.

Kazarian grew up in an Armenian community in Pawtucket, Rhode Island–a small mill town— and would go on to name his future investment fund after the street he grew up on: Japonica Street–the name of a Japanese flower.

He graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, with a Bachelors of Arts, before attending Brown University to get a master's degree.

He went on graduate from Columbia Business School with a M.B.A. During nights at Columbia, he interned at Goldman Sachs, after-which he was offered a full-time position at the firm in their investment banking division.

In 1981, Kazarian was hired as a full-time investment banker at Goldman Sachs & Co. While at Goldman he worked with multinational investment clients and emerging markets.

He often stayed up past 4 AM competing work during his time at the firm.

He left Goldman in 1987.

Japonica Partners was formally founded in 1988 in Providence, Rhode Island, by Kazarian.

Since its founding, Kazarian has been president and CEO of the firm.

Previous to his founding of the firm, he was an investment banker for Goldman Sachs and briefly served as the president and CEO of Sunbeam-Oster from 1990 to 1993 as a corporate raider.

He is known for his bidding wars with high net worth individuals and companies to gain assets for his firm, most notably his bidding war against Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) for the acquisition of Borden.

Kazarian is seen to be secretive about current or future investment decisions; he opens and closes positions without prior announcement or much after-trade commentary.

He is considered by the investment community to be a "vulture capitalist".

Due to its high buy-ins ($250 million), The Hedge Fund Journal called his fund a "money manager for money managers".

In 1990, Kazarian, then 37, was asked to serve out a three-year term as chairman and CEO of Sunbeam-Oster, after his private equity firm bought it out in a corporate raid.

During his tenure he brought the company back from the verge of bankruptcy and created multiple profit streams for the company, ultimately returning it to profitability.

His time as head of the company is used as a case study at Harvard Business School; Steven Fenster, a professor at Harvard University, has been quoted as labeling Kazarian as "a mad genius" with "incredible" business acumen.

According to an article by The Wall Street Journal, employees at the firm viewed him as an "overbearing boss whose frequent harangues and erratic, autocratic behavior made their lives miserable".

He often called top managers to "crisis meetings" at late hours in the night and encouraged inter-departmental competition.

Top managers at the firm said that they were "pitted against one another, publicly hazed, humiliated and even physically intimidated".

Roderick Hills, former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said of Kazarian: "as Will Rogers said, no one is quite as good or quite as bad as they're supposed to be."

In 1991, he was compensated with $1.84 million.

During his tenure he was known to give bonuses to his top managers, sometimes spanning up to 20% of annual pay.

Three years later, the board of directors compensated him with a pay package of $2.75 million.

However, his management style was viewed as "unacceptable" in the coming years.

Kazarian wanted to move the company headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee because of their relaxed tax structure over Rhode Island–something he began to initiate without the board's approval.

The board of directors of the company asked Kazarian to step down as CEO, but after his refusal and attempt to over take executives positions, his employment contract was suspended and eventually terminated.

After his was fired, the company's stock dropped by 10% and took four months to recover–however, trading volume for the stock was permanently expanded.

Months after his dismissal from the company and return to Japonica, some of his associates at Sunbeam brought multiple lawsuits against him–he won all of them, garnering a total of $160 million in settlements.

After seeing southern European economic decline, he began to look at companies in the area to invest in.

On a trip to Greece, he inquired about the government's financial statements; after hearing they did not assemble these statements, he began researching spending and debt ratios of the country.

In 1993, he founded the Charles & Agnes Kazarian Eternal Foundation, for which he has also been chairman since its inception.

Through his earlier years with Japonica, Kazarian oversaw approximately $2 billion in shareholder wealth.

The company specializes in under-performing global asset classes and undervalued investment positions.

During the 2013 Greek government-debt crisis, Kazarian become one of the largest bidders for Greek bonds, eventually executing a bond portfolio of €2.9 billion (US$3.8 billion).

As the sole owner of the bond position, this portfolio makes up the majority of his overall net worth.

On December 11, 2017, it was reported that Kazarian opened an office branch in Lisbon, Portugal tasked with "snapping up assets" in the country's real estate and technology markets.