Now, group CFO of international beverage company St Peter’s Spirits and a co-founder of Silver Crown Royalties, a royalty and streaming company, both based in Toronto, Hassnain Raza FCCA was born one of seven siblings in a small village in Pakistan. While they may not have had the type of opportunities that many take for granted, all of them achieved a university education. ‘All of my schooling was in government schools with limited facilities’ Raza explains.
He credits his parents with his achievements – multiple degrees, professional accreditations and a corner office. ‘They worked hard and sacrificed to make sure we were all educated. My father, when asked about his investments for the future, would proudly point out to his children and their education being the most important investment for the future of his family.’
‘I wanted to explore the world and work in different global markets’
But business was in Raza’s blood from an early age. ‘In the village I grew up in, we lived as a joint family in one big house, and all of us loved a cake, as part of morning tea, that was made by a bakery across the street. I saw this as a business opportunity. I would go and buy a dozen of those cakes for PKR 10, which I would resell individually for PKR 1 to earn a profit of PKR 2 per dozen. It was my first informal business venture, and it planted the early seeds of my entrepreneurial curiosity.’
It was through this venture, he says, that he accumulated some money, opened a bank account and was able to buy his first bike.
First moves
After graduating from university, he joined KPMG in Karachi where he completed his professional accountancy qualification and gained his ACCA and CA designation. ‘CA is where I started,’ he says, ‘but I quickly realised that CA is very local to Pakistan. It’s great, it’s very lucrative, but I wanted to explore the world and work in different markets globally. I very quickly realised that ACCA would be the route for me.’
He earned opportunities to go to KPMG Dubai and KPMG Bahamas on short-term secondments. ‘I went to The Bahamas for three months but stayed there for 11 years! I completed my MBA there and received my CA designation there as a direct result of global partnership of ACCA. By the time I moved to KPMG Toronto where my wife and I decided to raise a family, I had obtained CPA Canada qualification under an MRA between ACCA and CPA Canada.’
Into business
In 2018 Raza went from practice to business, becoming director of financial reporting and then vice president of finance of Lifeist Wellness (formerly Namaste Technologies), a wellness and cannabis company based in Toronto, Canada.
The reason for leaving KPMG after 18 years? ‘Family,’ he says. ‘I got into some very big projects, which would require a lot of travel between the US and Canada. I felt the lifestyle wouldn’t be fair to my daughter, who was a few months old, so I decided to make a change.’
‘Almost every other opportunity that arose was in this sector’
As for the cannabis sector, in 2018 it was federally legalised in Canada. ‘Almost every other opportunity that arose was within this sector,’ Raza says. ‘It was growing, booming.’
Lifeist would be Raza’s first venture into the cannabis and wellness sector, but not the last. His role in raising C$100m in two private placements, in combination with his years at KPMG, landed him his next job as CFO at newly founded St Peter’s Spirits.
Starting from scratch
St Peter’s is a Toronto-based privately owned beverage company in the hemp and cannabis sector operating in Canada and the USA. As the third person in the startup, Raza was involved in growing the business from the ground up.
‘When I joined the company, it was a pre-revenue start-up,’ he recalls. ‘We were negotiating commercial partnerships and making foundational decisions such as group structure, types and number of entities, their jurisdiction and location of strategic assets and operations. I was leading all those early strategic discussions.’
At the group scaled up, Raza was instrumental in implementing financial strategy including setting up management processes, building teams, setting up the accounting and financial reporting policies. And again, he was heavily involved in early rounds of financing and making the company IPO ready. ‘We’re currently working on multiple strategies for the next phase of our growth including our options to a backdoor listing [a reverse takeover] or going traditional IPO [first issue of shares].’
‘St Peter’s award-winning and category leader hemp beverages portfolio under the brand name Green Monké has already crowned it to be one of the best edibles multiple times for the past few years and is currently part of the hemp/cannabis industry disrupting a $256bn US alcohol industry.’
‘Success isn’t defined by where you stand today, but by how far you’ve travelled’
To co-founder
The next step of his growth and entrepreneurship journey took Raza from an early hire executive to a co-founder. ‘In 2022, I co-founded Silver Crown Royalties Inc. (Ticker: SCRI), alongside a group of seasoned industry leaders. Silver Crown is a royalty and streaming investment company focused exclusively in the silver space having assets in multiple countries. On 25 July 25 we successfully took the company public on one of Canada’s senior exchanges, and today it carries a market capitalisation of over C$23m.’
Raza has also won acclaim, winning digital business magazine Acquisition International’s Beverage Manufacturing CFO of the Year award in 2023, although he prefers to take the longer view: ‘Success isn’t defined by where you stand today, but by how far you’ve travelled from where you began.’
When not building and managing the financial future of St Peter’s and Silver Crown, Raza devotes his time to volunteering as a principal and teacher of a community Sunday school, and to his family, two children and a cat. His children are born and raised in Greater Toronto Area. As part of his belief in the power of education to change lives, Raza is the founder and patron of Allama Iqbal Model School in his home village in Pakistan where more than 300 children are currently provided free education from kindergarten to grade 8.
CV
2020–present
Group CFO, St Peter’s Spirits
Co-foudner and CFO, Silver Crown Royalties Inc
2018–20
VP finance and acting CFO, Lifeist
2001–18
Senior manager at KPMG, in Pakistan, Dubai, Bahamas and then Canada
