Brookfield: How a Toronto Conglomerate Became a US$1 Trillion Alternative-Asset Manager

Brookfield is the rare company that has reinvented itself three times without changing its core idea: own real assets, run them well and compound. What began as the São Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Company in 1899 became Brascan, a sprawling Toronto conglomerate controlled by the Bronfman family’s Edper group, and then, after Bruce Flatt took charge in 2002, a focused manager of infrastructure, renewable power, property, private equity and credit for the world’s largest institutions. In 2026 the asset-management arm, Brookfield Asset Management, reported more than US$1 trillion under management, US$672 billion of fee-bearing capital and quarterly fee-related earnings of US$808 million, while the parent, Brookfield Corporation, sat on US$210 billion of deployable capital. This article explains how the structure works, why the head office moved to New York, and what the 2025 and 2026 results say about the model. It is part of the Canada Company Stories hub.

How did a Brazilian tramway company become a Toronto conglomerate?

Brookfield’s lineage runs through more than a century of Canadian capital markets. The São Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Company was founded in 1899 by Canadian engineers and financiers to electrify Brazil’s largest city; Brazilian Traction, Light and Power was incorporated in Toronto in 1912 as its holding company and for decades was one of the largest Canadian-listed firms. In 1969 the company renamed itself Brascan, a contraction of Brasil and Canada, and through the 1970s sold down its Brazilian utilities while buying Canadian property, timber, mining and brewing assets.

The modern shape of the company emerged from the Bronfman family’s Edper Investments, founded by Peter and Edward Bronfman in 1959. Edper took control of Brascan in 1979 and built one of Canada’s most complex corporate pyramids, with dozens of listed subsidiaries including Noranda, Trilon Financial and Carena Properties. The pyramid nearly collapsed in the early-1990s real estate crash, and the company that emerged, renamed EdperBrascan in 1997 and Brascan again in 2000, had to simplify or die.

That is where Bruce Flatt enters. A Winnipeg-born accountant who joined Brascan in 1990 and made his name restructuring the Olympia & York office portfolio after that developer’s bankruptcy, Flatt became chief executive in 2002 at the age of 36. His thesis was that the company should stop being a conglomerate holding stakes in unrelated businesses and instead become an owner-operator of real assets with the capacity to manage other people’s money alongside its own. In 2005 Brascan was renamed Brookfield Asset Management, after the Brookfield Properties subsidiary, and the asset-management strategy was formalised. Readers interested in the Canadian conglomerate tradition will find a parallel in the Desmarais family’s Power Corporation.

What is the Bruce Flatt model and why does it work?

The Flatt model combines three things: contrarian buying of real assets when capital is scarce, operational expertise in running them, and a permanent balance sheet that invests alongside institutional clients. Brookfield calls itself an owner-operator rather than a financial sponsor, and the distinction matters because it allows the firm to buy assets that need fixing, such as Westinghouse Electric out of bankruptcy in 2018, Australia’s Multiplex in 2007 or distressed office towers after 2008.

The firm’s investment philosophy is explicitly countercyclical. Flatt has repeatedly argued that the best returns come from buying high-quality assets during periods of stress, from Brazilian infrastructure in the 2015 recession to London offices after Brexit, and from being a provider of capital when banks and public markets retreat. That requires patient capital, which is why Brookfield raised long-dated and perpetual funds earlier than most peers and why it built a large insurance business whose liabilities match the duration of infrastructure assets.

The second pillar is the listed-partnership structure. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (2008), Brookfield Renewable Partners (2011), Brookfield Property Partners (2013, taken private again in 2021) and Brookfield Business Partners (2016) each gave public investors direct access to an asset class while Brookfield retained control, management fees and incentive distributions. The partnerships also act as anchor investors in Brookfield’s private funds, which lets the firm launch flagship vehicles at a scale few rivals can match.

The third pillar is scale in operations. Brookfield’s companies employ roughly 250,000 people, from hydroelectric dam operators in Quebec to port workers in Australia and nuclear engineers at Westinghouse. That operational footprint is a sourcing advantage, because the firm sees deals before they reach auction, and a value-creation lever once assets are bought.

Why did Brookfield spin out its asset manager in 2022?

Brookfield separated the asset-management business from the parent in December 2022 because the market was valuing the combined company as a discounted holding company rather than as a high-multiple fee business. The parent renamed itself Brookfield Corporation (BN) and distributed a 25 per cent interest in the newly listed Brookfield Asset Management Ltd (BAM) to shareholders, keeping the other 75 per cent.

The logic was borrowed from the US alternatives industry. Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and Ares had all been rerated as investors learned to value recurring management fees separately from balance-sheet investments. BAM was designed as the pure-play version of Brookfield: an asset-light company with no debt, paying out about 90 per cent of distributable earnings as dividends, and growing with fee-bearing capital. Brookfield Corporation kept the capital-intensive pieces: the direct stakes in the listed partnerships, the real estate held on balance sheet, and the fast-growing insurance arm, Brookfield Wealth Solutions.

The split created a complication, which is that BAM the listed company initially owned only 25 per cent of the asset-management business, with Brookfield Corporation holding the other 75 per cent privately. Investors found that confusing, and it limited BAM’s eligibility for major stock indices. The November 2024 shareholder letter proposed the fix described in the next section.

Why did BAM move its head office from Toronto to New York?

BAM moved its head office to New York because that is where its capital, shareholders and most of its employees already were, and because a US domicile opened the door to inclusion in US stock indices that passive investors track. The plan was announced in a 4 November 2024 shareholder letter, approved at a special meeting on 20 December 2024 and completed in early 2025.

Two things happened at once. First, Brookfield Corporation exchanged its 73 per cent private interest in the asset-management business for about 1.2 billion newly issued BAM shares on a one-for-one basis, so that BAM the listed company owns 100 per cent of the asset-management business and Brookfield Corporation owns roughly 73 per cent of BAM’s shares. That cleaned up the ownership and roughly quadrupled BAM’s public float on paper. Second, BAM changed its head office to New York while keeping its legal domicile in Canada and its Toronto operations. Flatt and president Connor Teskey wrote that the company had effectively operated as a US business for twenty years, with most of its revenue, assets under management and employees in the United States and most of its shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The move was politically sensitive in Canada, coming months before the 2025 trade war and at a time when Mark Carney, then Brookfield’s chair, was preparing to enter politics. Brookfield Corporation, the parent, remains headquartered at Brookfield Place in Toronto and continues to report there, and the company has stressed that its Canadian employment and tax base did not change. But the symbolism was clear: Canada’s most successful financial exporter now tells investors it is a New York company.

What do the infrastructure, renewable, real estate and credit arms actually own?

Brookfield’s platforms are organised by asset class, each with a listed vehicle, a family of private funds and an operating group. Infrastructure, run through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and the flagship Brookfield Infrastructure Fund series, owns utilities, toll roads, ports, railways, pipelines, telecom towers and data centres across five continents. The sixth infrastructure flagship raised US$9.3 billion in Q2 2026 alone and is on track to be the largest vintage the firm has raised.

Renewable power, through Brookfield Renewable Partners and the Global Transition funds, is one of the world’s largest owners of hydroelectric, wind, solar and storage capacity, and since 2018 has also owned Westinghouse, the nuclear services company, which in 2026 secured a further US$17.5 billion financing commitment from the US Department of Energy for reactor long-lead items. The platform anchors Brookfield’s energy-transition pitch and its AI-infrastructure push: in 2026 the firm expanded its Bloom Energy fuel-cell partnership to US$25 billion and planned a US$100 billion AI data-centre complex in Kentucky. Canada’s own clean-electricity build-out is one of its home markets, and in March 2026 Brookfield and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec agreed to buy renewable developer Boralex for about C$3.8 billion.

Real estate, the oldest business, was taken private in 2021 when Brookfield Property Partners was folded back into the parent, and it now operates through Brookfield’s private real estate funds and directly held portfolios such as Canary Wharf in London and the office towers it shares the Canadian market with. The 2026 sale of One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf for £750 million and the US$650 million sale of the Multiplex construction business show the firm recycling capital out of mature assets.

Private equity, through Brookfield Business Partners, owns industrial and services companies and raised US$6.7 billion for its seventh flagship in Q2 2026. Credit, the fastest-growing platform, is built on Oaktree Capital Management, in which Brookfield bought a 61 per cent stake for US$4.8 billion in 2019 and whose remaining 26 per cent it agreed to buy for about US$3 billion in February 2026, completing the purchase in July. Credit now includes Oaktree, Brookfield’s own infrastructure and real estate debt funds and a large insurance-driven private credit business.

Source: Brookfield Asset Management results releases, 4 February 2026 and 5 August 2026.

What did the 2025 results and the 2026 fundraising record show?

The 2025 results, announced on 4 February 2026, were the strongest in BAM’s history. Fee-related earnings rose 22 per cent to US$2.995 billion at a 58 per cent margin, distributable earnings rose 14 per cent to US$2.695 billion, fee-bearing capital reached US$603 billion and the firm raised US$112 billion, including a record US$35 billion in the fourth quarter. It deployed US$66 billion, its biggest year ever, and raised the quarterly dividend 15 per cent to US$0.5025 a share.

The second quarter of 2026 then broke the fundraising record again. BAM raised US$77 billion in three months, taking the first-half total to US$98 billion, and fee-bearing capital climbed to US$672 billion. Fee-related earnings were US$808 million, up 20 per cent, distributable earnings US$707 million, up 15 per cent, and net income US$1.17 billion. The firm’s first dedicated AI-infrastructure fund raised US$5 billion, and real estate funds raised US$4.3 billion while deploying US$5.2 billion into a US manufactured-housing portfolio and an outdoor-storage take-private.

Brookfield Corporation’s own Q2 2026 results, reported on 13 August 2026, add the parent’s perspective. Distributable earnings before realisations were US$1.4 billion, or US$0.61 a share, up 15 per cent, with the asset-management segment contributing US$740 million, wealth solutions US$480 million (up 23 per cent) and operating businesses US$361 million. Deployable capital stood at a record US$210 billion. The insurance arm had more than US$190 billion of assets after the roughly US$3.2 billion acquisition of the UK’s Just Group added about US$45 billion, and it is targeting more than US$300 billion by the end of the decade. The firm also took its US co-location data-centre business, Csquare, public in an IPO that raised about US$1.2 billion while keeping a 64 per cent stake.

How does the succession from Flatt to Teskey change the company?

The appointment of Connor Teskey as BAM’s chief executive on 4 February 2026 formalised a transition that had been under way for years, and it changes the company less than the headline suggests. Flatt remains chief executive of Brookfield Corporation, where the balance-sheet decisions are made, and chair of BAM. Teskey, who joined Brookfield in 2012 from a Canadian bank’s corporate-debt desk, led the Oaktree acquisition at 31, became chief executive of Brookfield Renewable in 2020 and BAM’s president in 2022, has effectively run the fundraising and client machine since the 2022 spin-out.

Flatt described the appointment as the next step in a process begun four years earlier. The timing links to Mark Carney’s departure as Brookfield chair in early 2024 to pursue Canadian politics, after which Flatt took the chair and the question of who would eventually run the asset manager became pressing. Teskey’s age, 38 at appointment, signals that Brookfield intends to keep a decades-long investment horizon in the hands of someone who will be there to see it through.

The practical shift is in emphasis. Teskey’s priorities, as set out at the 2025 investor day and in the 2026 calls, are AI and digital infrastructure, energy transition in all its forms including nuclear, and the growth of the credit and insurance platforms. Those are the three areas Flatt identified in Q2 2026 as expanding opportunities under the labels of digitalisation, decarbonisation and deglobalisation. The firm’s exposure to Canada remains significant through Brookfield Renewable’s hydro assets, Brookfield Infrastructure’s pipelines and the parent’s Toronto base, but the growth story is global and, increasingly, American.

What are the biggest risks in Brookfield’s structure?

There is also a reputational dimension specific to Canada. The New York move, Carney’s transition from Brookfield chair to prime minister and the firm’s prominence in federal initiatives such as the September 2026 Canada Investment Summit have made Brookfield a political subject at home. The company’s response has been to emphasise its Canadian employment and its role in partnerships with Canadian pension funds, but the perception that Canada’s financial champion has become an American firm is not going away.

What can founders and investors learn from Brookfield?

The first lesson is that corporate structure is a strategic tool, not an afterthought. Brookfield has repeatedly reorganised itself, from conglomerate to asset manager, from a single listing to a family of partnerships, from an integrated company to a parent-and-manager pair, each time to make a particular kind of value legible to a particular kind of investor. Founders who understand how their company will be valued, and by whom, can design the entity to match.

The second lesson is the value of permanent capital. Brookfield’s ability to buy during crises rests on having a balance sheet that does not need to sell, and the firm’s expansion into insurance since 2020 is an extension of that principle, because annuity liabilities are the longest-duration capital available. For investors, it explains why Brookfield Corporation trades on a different logic from BAM: one is a compounding balance sheet, the other a fee annuity.

The third lesson is that succession planned early looks like continuity rather than crisis. By moving Teskey through the Oaktree deal, Brookfield Renewable and the BAM presidency over a decade, Flatt made the 2026 handover a non-event for clients. Compare that with the leadership turbulence at some Canadian banks in the same period, and the advantage of a patient approach is obvious. For a different model of Canadian capital exported at scale, see the UK Company Stories hub, where Brookfield is now one of the largest real-estate and infrastructure owners.

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