Breakout Capital

The big idea behind Breakout Capital is both timeless and timely. The hot investment theme of one decade has never survived into the next, not since markets became truly global around 1980. The dominant investments of the 2010s very likely won’t dominate the 2020s, either. Breakout Capital is a young investment firm designed to capture the opportunities of the next decade, every decade.

The 2010s were a time of particularly massive dislocation in global markets. International equity investors had eyes for one size of company, the mega caps, in one category, growth, in one sector, tech, and just two countries, the United States and China. Breakout Capital is an alternative for the many large equity investors who are now looking to diversify beyond big tech in the superpowers.

Breakout Capital is the brainchild of Founder and Chief Investment Officer Ruchir Sharma, whose entire career has been preparation for this enterprise, and this idea. A veteran leader of Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s global emerging markets equity team, he has a quarter century experience traveling and investing in emerging markets, learning their cyclical rhythms.

From his travels and research, he developed a system of ten rules for identifying the markets most likely to “break out”-outperform their competition over the next three to five years. Breakout capital’s Managing Partner, Swanand Kelkar, was one of the most successful portfolio managers on Ruchir’s team at Morgan Stanley. There, Swanand developed a process for identifying stocks with the potential to become “consistent compounders”, and this methodology is now the backbone of Breakout Capital’s approach to stock selection.

The firm is built as well on Ruchir’s long standing relationship with Greg Fleming, a Morgan Stanley alum who is now CEO of Rockefeller Capital Management. Working to transform a firm with 19th century roots as the Rockefeller family fund into a global investment firm, Fleming welcomed Breakout Capital as a new strategic partner in Rockefeller’s growing international arm. Ruchir also serves in a global advisory role as Chairman of Rockefeller International.

Rockefeller Capital Management provides human resources support to Breakout Capital, in addition to certain capital raising services, and permission to use its name. Breakout Capital’s own team handles investment, sales and marketing, and management guided by its own advisory board of seasoned investment industry professionals. They are Erik Serrano Berntsen (formerly Bain & Co., now CEO of Stable Asset Management); Manju Juneja (formerly Barclays Capital and NWI Management LP); Cristina Piedrahita (formerly Fidelity and Morgan Stanley); Vikram Pandit, (former CEO of Citigroup, now Chairman and CEO of The Orogen Group); and Vindi Banga (formerly Unilever, now Partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice).

Greatly strengthened by the experience of its founders, its strategic partners and its board, Breakout Capital is an entrepreneurial venture with deeply established roots-a combination of advantages that are particularly valuable in emerging equity markets.