Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, has a bond-trading platform of its own.
Iran to California
Tall and thin with a stubbly, salt-and-pepper beard, Raazi, born with the first name Mehra, wears his hair in a ponytail. He started calling himself Cactus in college, and later made it his legal middle name.
He was four years old when he arrived in Santa Monica from Iran in 1974. His mother found work as a hairstylist in Beverly Hills. His father had been an official in the tourism ministry in Iran. In the U.S., he became an electronics repairman. (“I had a reputation for being very nice to the copy repairman at Goldman,” Raazi said.)
Raazi discovered he had a knack for sales when he got a job hawking skis when he was 15. Bentley, his longtime friend, chalks up Raazi’s ability to needing to fit into a community that was far from welcoming to a Persian transplant.
“Santa Monica High School was a very white, very homogeneous world,” said Bentley, who went on to local fame as host of the KCRW radio show “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” “He used his personality as a strength to make friends.”
While at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Raazi became a young father. He needed to work, so he sold ads for Urb, a hip-hop magazine, and was a doorman at Pink’s nightclub in Santa Monica. Then he developed an interest in finance.
Through a friend, he met Scott Lawin, who worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Raazi moved to New York in 1998 to share an apartment with him. Lawin remembered working each night until 1 or 2 a.m. and returning home to find Raazi waiting up to ask him questions.
“Coming from the trading floor and seeing someone who was a natural salesperson, very bright and hungrier than anyone else -- in my experience, those are the people who succeed on Wall Street,” Lawin said.
Lawin went on to create Parametric LP, a private investment firm that backed Elefant.
After more than 30 interviews, Raazi was hired by Goldman for its medium-term notes desk in 1998. During his first year, Raazi also worked as a doorman at night spot Torch on the Lower East Side. He had child support to pay and traveled to California twice a month to see his son.