Reza Irani Kermani studied at a French School, Lycée Razi until 1980. He continued his high school in Complexe Scolaire de Valbonne, Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne in France where he got his International Baccalaureate. He then travelled to Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where he studied Production Engineering and Commerce at the University of Birmingham. In 1989, upon receiving his degree in Engineering, he started work at Management Investment and Trade Ltd “MIT” in London as a Clerk. MIT was an affiliate of MKS Finance SA, based Geneva, a 24-hour bullion and foreign Exchange trading house. Reza became a trader in 1990 and was promoted to act as General Manager in 1991, when under his management, MIT became one of the largest trading entities in the world in foreign exchange with a daily turnover of $11 Billion.
By 1993, MIT’s vision was that China was the future and given the size of its bullion business, MIT was very well established within Asia. MKS sold their shares of the business to Po Sang Bank – a sister Bank of Bank of China. Reza Irani was in charge of running the London office but given the red tape in the Chinese hierarchy, he soon realized that MIT was not going to grow as fast as he wished. Po Sang Bank sold their shares with a substantial profit to Preussag AG’s London affiliate, Amalgamated Metals Corporation “AMC” in 1994.
Reza Irani was in charge of the bullion and foreign exchange trading department until 1997 as AMC had a clause that obliged Reza to stay for at least 3 years. In 1997, he joined the Abela Corporation as a board member of several companies, including Sogeres SA. The Abela Corporation had 40,000 employees with offices in 44 countries with a primary focus on catering, life support services, a chain of supermarkets in the Middle East, investments such as Gold mines in Africa, Salmon Farm in Scotland and Hotels in London, Nice, Cannes and Monaco. He stayed with the Abela Corporation until the owner (Mr. Albert Abela) passed away.
In 2000, Reza Irani Kermani co-founded Symphony Partners with his long-time friend, Abbas Jafarian. Aside from its trading portfolios, Symphony was involved in real estate asset management for a large MENA Fund. This included activities such as sourcing, organising financing and property management of the underlying assets.
Following Symphony’s success, Reza Irani-Kermani and Abbas Jafarian created Black Pearl Capital “BPC” in 2007 as their own proprietary investment Company, sourcing Real Estate deals in Eastern and Western Europe in addition to investing in Private Equity transactions globally.
In 2009, they established the Black Pearl Global Opportunity Fund “BPGOF” where it invested solely BPC Partners’ money. BPGOF was primarily investing in liquid assets such as global financial markets and select Private Equity transactions. Black Pearl Capital is a proprietary investment company focusing on opportunistic private and public equity investments in specific industry sectors. An ongoing deal flow is generated by identifying assets with superior growth potential in global growth markets, or distressed assets where intervention can add value.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Black Pearl Capital’s Funds cover a global investment programme. Portfolio companies are located in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia.
The Funds of Black Pearl Capital are proprietary closed Funds. The Funds are managed in-house throughout BPC’s worldwide office networks and the Partners themselves are active participants and sit on the board of the Funds’ investments.
Reza Irani Kermani 