Breakwater Management Team

Eric Beckman is responsible for the origination, structuring, execution and oversight of Breakwater’s portfolio and is Chairman of the Investment Committee. Eric has 24 years of experience in leveraged finance and private company investing. Professional Experience. Prior to partnering with Saif Mansour in 2014, Eric spent 16 years as a senior investment professional at Ares Management in direct lending and private equity. He joined Ares in 1998 as a Principal, focusing on mezzanine, special situations and private equity, and was a Partner of Ares Corporate Opportunities Fund I, Ares’ first private equity fund with $750 million of commitments. He subsequently became a Senior Partner and the West Coast Group Head of the Ares Direct Lending Group, where he built the West Coast origination and execution effort and supervised the Venture Lending and Project Finance teams. Eric served as an Executive Vice President of Ares Capital Corp. (NASDAQ: ARCC), which grew during his tenure from $250 million to $7.5 billion in assets, and as the Co-Portfolio Manager of Ares Mezzanine Partners. He began his finance career at Goldman Sachs, where he focused on leveraged finance and assisted in the creation and management of the West Street Bridge Loan Fund. Eric has led investments and served on the Boards of Directors of several companies, including Samsonite Corp., House of Blues Entertainment and Stag Parkway. He has been a longtime supporter of the Posse Foundation, serving as the founding Chair of its Los Angeles Advisory Committee and a member of its national Board of Directors, and currently sits on the Boards of IKAR and the Ziegler School. Education. Eric graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Cornell University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received his J.D. from the Yale Law School where he was a Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also attended Christ Church in Oxford, England, and was a Rotary International Graduate Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.