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Rupert de Borchgrave
Rupert de Borchgrave trained first as a scientist, studying Psychology at Oxford and completing a DPhil in Neuroscience, before moving progressively into economics and finance. He began his professional career with McKinsey & Co, where he spent two years, followed by five years with Sophron Partners, a London consultancy specialising in such areas as strategic sales, customer analysis and marketing data. In 2002 he also co-authored a Chatham House report, sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development, on technology and sustainable development in preparation for that year’s World Summit in Johannesburg.
Background
In 2003 he broke away from this career long enough to travel by public transport from London to Mount Ararat, through southern Europe, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. The journey, made as the Iraq War began, eventually supplied the narrative of his book, Lost Levant, published by EnvelopeBooks more than twenty years later.
His next sustained involvement was with African finance. He spent three years as a sell-side securities analyst with Afrinvest/UBA Capital, before moving in 2009 to the Central Bank of Nigeria, where he was Special Adviser to the Governor for Economic Development, placing him at the centre of the institution during an exceptionally turbulent year for Nigerian banking, when the Central Bank was confronting serious weaknesses in the country’s banking system.
From 2011 he moved from analysing investments to making them, initially as co-manager of the LGM Frontier Fund at Lloyd George Management. He subsequently managed global equities for the Rokos Family Office, where his global-equity portfolio produced above-market returns between 2013 and 2015. He then continued investing his own capital along similar lines before joining BlueBox Asset Management in 2019 as co-manager, with William de Gale, of its Global Technology Fund.
When de Borchgrave joined, BlueBox was still a small specialist investment operation; the technology strategy did not reach $100 million under management until late 2020. It subsequently passed $1 billion, survived a fall below $400 million during the 2022 technology-market collapse but by 2026 had grown beyond $3 billion in assets under management. He has been one of the fund’s two managers continuously since October 2019.
