Mansoor Ijaz (born August 1961) is a Pakistani-American venture financier and hedge-fund manager. He is founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management Ltd, a New York and London-based investment firm that operates CARAT, a proprietary trading system developed by Ijaz in the late 1980s. His venture investments included unsuccessful efforts in 2013 to acquire a stake in Lotus F1, a Formula One team. In the 1990s, Ijaz and his companies were contributors to Democratic Party institutions as well as the presidential candidacies of Bill Clinton.
During the first Clinton term, when the U.S. had severed official ties with Sudan, Ijaz opened informal communications links between Washington and Khartoum in an effort to gain access to Sudanese intelligence data on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, who were then operating from Sudan. Ijaz was involved in efforts to broker a ceasefire in Kashmir in 2000–2001, and in the Memogate controversy, in which former Pakistani envoy Husain Haqqani allegedly used him to deliver a memorandum to senior U.S. officials in order to thwart an attempted coup by the Pakistani military after bin Laden was killed.
Personal life
Mansoor Ijaz was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and grew up on a farm in Montgomery County, Virginia. He has two brothers (Atif and Mujeeb) and a sister (Neelam Ijaz-Ahmad). His brother Farouk died in 2012.
His father, Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz (June 12, 1937— July 9, 1992), was a Pakistani experimental physicist and professor of physics at Virginia Tech who was noted for his early role in the development of Pakistan's nuclear energy program and his discovery of numerous isotopes while working at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. His mother, Lubna Razia Ijaz, was a solar physicist who worked with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization to develop renewable energy programs in Pakistan.
Ijaz received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Virginia in 1983 and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, where he was trained as a neural sciences engineer in the Harvard-MIT Medical Engineering Medical Physics Program (M.E.M.P.).
While attending the University of Virginia, Ijaz earned All-American status as a powerlifter in March 1982 with a combined lift total (squat, bench press and deadlift) of 960 lbs at the National Collegiate Powerlifting Championships held at Marshall University. Coached by John Gamble, he competed in the 56 kg class. Later that year, he competed at the U.S. National Powerlifting Championships in the 52 kg class and finished third. Ijaz was Virginia State Champion in the 52 kg and 56 kg classes and set more than 25 Virginia State powerlifting records during three years in the sport.
Professional life Wall Street career
Mansoor Ijaz began his career on Wall Street in 1986, joining Van Eck Associates Corporation as a technology analyst. In 1990, Ijaz left Van Eck to start Crescent Investment Management LLC, where he developed a trading system, Computer-Aided Regression Analysis Techniques, to manage his first hedge fund. His mentor at Van Eck, Klaus Buescher, joined Crescent as president in 1991, and they together managed the company until Buescher's death in June 1997. Since that time, Ijaz has remained active as Crescent's owner, operating it as a quantitative investment adviser and venture investing firm.
In the early 2000s, Crescent transitioned from a traditional hedge-fund management firm to a focus on venture investments, initially in homeland security technologies after the September 11 attacks. Ijaz formed and listed Crescent Technology Ventures PLC on London's AIM Stock Exchange to raise venture capital for his projects, but changes in AIM Rules for small-cap investment companies forced the start-up to de-list a year later. In the 2000s, Ijaz also launched an effort to finance and build what would have been the world's first underwater hotel, Hydropolis. Construction of this Dubai resort was projected to cost US$500 million in 2007, but was shelved by local authorities after the 2008 financial crisis. Crescent Hydropolis Holdings LLC continues operations today under private ownership.
Crescent's venture investments included a bid together with its Abu Dhabi affiliate, Al Manhal International Group LLC, to acquire a stake in Formula One team Lotus F1. Quantum Motorsports Limited, a partnership between Crescent and Al Manhal, announced its intention to acquire 35% of Lotus F1 in June 2013. After several delays related to financing the deal, it did not take place.
Media commentator Ijaz has also served as a media commentator and has written numerous opinion pieces for internationally known publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times in the United States and the Financial Times in the United Kingdom. On television, he has served as a guest commentator for U.S. networks CNN, ABC, and Fox News, as well as for the BBC in the United Kingdom. Hired as a Fox News contributor in late 2001, Ijaz appeared as a counterterrorism and foreign affairs analyst on various network programming. By 2007, his appearances on Fox were no longer exclusive to the network. He continued to appear periodically for various networks in Pakistan, India and the U.S. into early 2012 as Pakistan's Supreme Court-appointed Judicial Commission began the Memogate inquiry.
Political life
Through his opinion pieces and political fundraising, Ijaz has advocated for the integration of Muslims into the American political mainstream. He raised significant amounts for various Democratic Party causes during the 1990s when President Clinton had paved the way for minority communities to become more active in U.S. politics, encouraging fellow Pakistani and Muslim Americans to join his fundraising efforts along the way. In 1996, Ijaz raised or contributed more than $525,000 for the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, bringing Ijaz into close proximity with Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Clinton as well as other Clinton administration national security officials with whom he would later engage on Sudan, Kashmir and Pakistan's nuclear program.
Ijaz also used his fundraising results to advance his causes in Congress, appearing as an expert witness in front of committees in the Senate on extremist threats faced by the United States and in the House of Representatives to advocate for Washington to adopt a policy of "constructive engagement" with rogue Muslim countries affected by U.S. sanctions. As Ijaz' prominence in Democratic Party circles increased, allegations of conflicts with his business interests also surfaced, although they were never proven. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Ijaz had a public falling out with senior Clinton-era officials, including the former president, Sandy Berger and Susan Rice, over what he deemed were failures in their counterterrorism policies during Clinton's two terms in office. In 2007, Nevada Republicans approached Ijaz to run against Sen. Harry Reid, in a bid to unseat the Senate Majority Leader, but Ijaz declined.
Ijaz was a member of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council from 2007 until 2009,Atlantic Council and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,Council on Foreign Relations
Philanthropic activities Away from Crescent's daily affairs and former political and media engagements, Ijaz has served on the College Foundation Board of Trustees at the University of Virginia, and he serves on the advisory board of the Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation. RAF raises funds for building education infrastructure and programs in Afghanistan, including the construction of schools such as Mayar Elementary School, which enrolled 400 boys and girls from Maidan Wardak Province upon opening in late 2005. During the mid-1990s, Ijaz supported Developments in Literacy, an initiative to build and operate elementary schools in rural Pakistan as alternatives to the religious schools in which many Pakistani children were being radicalized. The group did not seek to create a secularized school system; its goal was to teach the Qur'an as one of many subjects rather than as the only subject. Ijaz and his wife Valérie also serve as goodwill ambassadors for a British charity, Children of Peace, that works to reconcile differences between Palestinian and Israeli youth. In late 2011, while addressing the World Peace Festival, a peace conference held in Berlin, Ijaz announced an intention to donate 1% of his net worth to create a Humanitarian Relief Fund that would make an effort to alleviate the root causes of poverty. In noting his belief that governments have often failed to provide assistance to the poor in sufficient ways over the long term, Ijaz sought similar pledges for the proposed fund from other philanthropists.
International negotiations
Negotiations with Sudan Mansoor Ijaz was involved in unofficial negotiations between the U.S. and Sudanese governments in 1996 and 1997 to obtain access to Sudan's intelligence files on Osama bin Laden and the early remnants of Al-Qaeda's network there after efforts to extradite bin Laden to the U.S. failed in early 1996. In the same year, the United States Congress imposed sanctions against Khartoum over allegations of harboring and abetting terrorist cells on its soil. In early 1996, CIA and State Department officials held secret meetings near Washington, D.C., with Sudan's then-defense minister, El Fatih Erwa. In May 1996, bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan under pressure from the United States when the meetings failed to reconcile U.S. demands made of Khartoum about its record in aiding, abetting and harboring known terrorist groups and individuals.
Ijaz first met Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and other Sudanese leaders in August 1996 and reported his findings back to U.S. government officials, including Lee Hamilton, ranking member of the House Committee on International Relations at the time, and Sandy Berger, then Clinton's deputy national security adviser, and Susan Rice, then director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. Initially, Khartoum sought U.S. sanctions relief, particularly for its growing oil sector, in return for access to its intelligence data on Al Qaeda's nascent network and bin Laden's activities there. However, the sanctions continued until U.S. officials exempted some in unrelated policy decisions that benefited U.S. oil companies. Ijaz then argued that Washington should adopt a policy of "constructive engagement" with Khartoum vis-a-vis economic development and political reconciliation in return for Sudanese counterterrorism cooperation.