>> it's one of the world's

largest alternatives to investment companies. wind farms, ports and even city skylines. bruce flat has been at the helm for more than two decades, overseeing more than nine hundred billion dollars of assets under management. the veteran chief -- chief executive is considered a visionary with a golden touch. for him, it's all about patients and finding the right investments. >> what you might think how do you describe your

company? >> we invest in, buy and own backbone of global economy. the water gets delivered to your house, the pipeline that brings different things to your community, the telecom towers the transmit your phone, the data center, through the state that you live in, it is what we own and build, so it is really what drives the economy and you don't often see our name. >> is that a good or a bad thing? >> it is because we are behind the seats but we are behind the things of a lot of parts of the global economy. we just try to be quiet and do everything. sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. i would say on balance, it has been good for us. francine you've been in: charge for 22 years. over two decades.

you've grown the business by so much. but with the most difficult question about how to grow it? >> the amazing thing about this business is you are learning every day in the world is changing all the time if i went back 32 is, what we invested in then and now are very different. data centers didn't exist. telecom towers were owned by all phone companies. the business evolves and tobacco the evolves of the economy so it is a really interesting business to be in because you are always learning. francine: and a difficult business because you don't want to invest in something that goes nowhere. >> you're always trying to understand where is the future going and how do we invest without? often it is listening to your counterparts, your clients, your partners and hearing what they

are saying. what they want to do, and we are going with them. we are the back of the honey global business, and when they need capital we fund it. francine: your northstar, as it were, i've three ds. >> we're always trying to figure out what are the themes that are going to drive the world? today, the digitalization of everything, the decarbonization of everything and the deglobalization of everything are three megatrend themes that are going to be very dominant in investing for the next 20 to 30 years. francine: geopolitics is taking a turn for the worse. had you keep that trajectory

saying we will digitize all over the place or how do you stay the course, as it were? >> but we try to do is find good countries, go there and stay there. invest in these things. and whether governments come or go or interest-rate still up and down aren't really relevant to these themes in the long term. need to make sure you have liquidity. you can find yourself and run good businesses. and that is more important than those general trends. we are investing for 30, 40, 50 years. francine: this digitalization the hardest because we don't really know where we will end up? >> i would say digitalization was happening because of cloud computing and the supertex companies getting into cloud computing and the event things that go to your ipad every day today and your phone, it is amazing what has happened in the past 20 years. but now with ai, is almost

exponentially taking it up. that is just another tailwind behind this whole sector. it was very strong before that, and for the last five, 7, 10 years we have been pushing into it but what is going on with ai is even more dramatic. the digitalization of everything is being driven by data centers and just the conductivity of them. but remember, everyone world has in some way committed to vince have less carbon. it is just transitioning the economy. it is not good or bad, just let's transition the economy to have less carbon the leaders in that today are the technology companies, so a lot of this is being triggered by the technology companies to go green, as it were.

one of the largest builders of solar and wind and now batteries, to be able to get carbon out of the system. whereas years ago, we sell power to the grid, today is mostly sold the corporates. francine: you have to take a bet on what kind of technology or unjust structure that's supporting it. >> we redoing solar 10 years ago, but very small. and only when the cough kirk -- cost curves made solar and wind at one where they are the most economic way to generate electricity. and at the point of that, you know if they are the most economic way to do it, and they have less carbon, they are going to win. that is why we are decarbonizing today, because in most countries this is the lowest cost energy. francine: but geopolitics must get in the way.

politicians have to be reelected how do you not waiver? >> remember the important point. in most countries, the lowest cost energy today for electricity is solar or wind. you don't need subsidies. and when you did need subsidies, politics matter. today you don't. francine: this is bringing back on shoring. > i think in covid i would say it has always been happening and people just learned we should have production capacity located in many things, located where you is them. so increasingly, for example, batteries. they are being used in america and therefore there are battery plants getting built in america. and there is enormous need for capital to fund battery plants. there is enormous need for semiconductors, for manufacturing capacity in

various locations around the world. it is just natural that everyone doesn't want to have all of that in one place. it's diversified. that is just a beef the which means it is just a lot of capital. francine: you make it sound very easy but this has gotten more than 900 dollars in assets under management. >> it's not easy, but if people things around the world, it gets simpler. it is not easy, but it is simpler. that's why we are in business, right? we've been doing this a long time. everything is not the same, but there are a lot of things that rhyme and therefore you can learn and continue to grow over time. francine: coming up, plans to invest in the financial backbone of the global economy. >> we think that is the next

phase of infrastructure invest ing.

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visit sandals.com or call 1-800 sandals. francine: i continue the conversation with roos flat -- bruce flatt. francine: did you know you want $1 trillion under management mark >> we are just trying to make money for our clients, and we have earned them a good return. we've not taken a lot of risk. if you can do that over a long time, you can compound their wealth, investment wealth to

very large sums of money, and that is what is for these sovereign, institutional pension investors. they need these types of assets to her and returns over the longer term. francine: you've also got into credit. how much are you expecting that to grow? >> >> happened with regulations in the banking system is it has pushed out credit off the balance sheets of the banks, and the right place where that is being undid from his institutional investors. therefore, investors like ourselves are continuing to grow our businesses where we are funding these type of products, but our business is not in competition with the banks. as a result of that, i would say it is facilitating the growth of the global financial markets as opposed to something that often

people talk about that we are at the wrong time in the cycle or whatever it is. francine: so how big you expect? >> this is where most of the capital is in the world. these funds used to be 20, $30 billion. today they are one trillion, $1.5 trillion. these are large sums of money. they need to put to work. >> when you look at regions, is it mainly the gcc countries? >> we try to her than good returns by taking moderate risk. if we could do that, when you want to do in your own portfolio estate moderate risk in earning return. >> you make it sound easy, but this is a know-how.

. >> i would say in the businesses is that we are in, we have more information than most people about what we do. therefore, what you might think of as risky to us, we've been in these businesses for a long time, we know what is getting shipped across the ocean in our containers. we know what is getting pumped into the ports in different countries. we know what is traveling on the roads, we know how many people are going into a shopping mall, know all of those things and that just informs us. we have better information to base our decisions than most people, but we are trying to lower the risks by doing that. of course investing is tough, it is not easy. therefore you are always taking

some form of risk. francine: how do you choose which company to buy? >> thoughtful analysis of what is in the business, proper pricing. when things are up a lot, just wait. most people invest at the wrong time because they get excited about the markets are telling them about a business, and that is usually when we are not investing. just wait for the time when it will be a little better to invest. francine: you spoken in the past about a big acquisition that would be transitional for brookfield. >> we are always looking for additions to the business. in 20, we brought oaktree into the fold and we have a partnership with the management there. that has been transformative to our credit business, and we are always looking for things like that to continue to build the business and just grow over time.

but if not, we just keep plugging away every day. francine: so it is more partnerships than outright acquisitions. this is a different kind of carbon fund. >> extradition business, we split off from our main infrastructure business for an a half years ago. we raised a large first-time fund. we just did the first close of our second fund for $10 billion. and then we started in emerging markets business. all we are trying to do is we informed our self about transition, build a team over a long time. now, some people said to us can use all the emerging markets as opposed to just developed markets? we didn't feel it appropriate to put them in the same fund so we are creating another and do

that, and some of our clients will come along with us and we are quite excited about it. francine: is it a template for possible future spinoffs? >> we have in our private equity business a sponsored business but we are also doing, we are just in the midst of creating strategy for the middle east which will be a separate pool of money. we are gritting a strategy for financial infrastructure, because we think that is the next phase of infrastructure investing is in the financial backbone of the global economy, and a lot of the world has been pushing toward financial infrastructure and is not appropriate for our infrastructure fund, so we are creating a new pool of money to do that. so there is a fine line between having too many things and making sure your clients who want to be invested with you in that type of area have a pool to

be able to do it with us. francine: when you look at infrastructure, consolidation was really i guess the name for the last six months. does that make your job easier or tougher? >> we were one of the pioneers of infrastructure going into institutional clients. they were eight industrial businesses ourselves and how we got into the infrastructure businesses we decided we didn't take the up and down many of the industrial businesses we had, but we really like the backbone infrastructure that was in these businesses. 20 years ago we started doing it for institutional clients. at that time nobody would listen to us or invest with us, so it is great that this has become mainstream today. the good news, i would say we

are still a leader in it. we have very large funds, the largest in the world. we just continued to try to differentiate our investment strategies and size, scale, operating people and just to grow in the places we are. to others getting stronger, does that help us? probably not, but it doesn't really bother us. and i think there is a place for us to continue to go in is this. francine: coming up why it bruce flatt has faith in the future of commercial real estate. >> there's opportunity coming. if you know what you're doing, you could pick the right assets, there was a great opportunity here.

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>> the next story is that interest rates are coming down, fundamentals are pretty good in a lot of commercial real estate. of course there is a tale of some investors that had properties that for this environment, the fundamentals either don't support it or the financing they have can't be supported and therefore those have to get dealt with. that is a tale that is getting dealt with within the financial system. fundamentals are actually getting better. interest rates are coming down, which means that values are going to improve. but there opportunity coming. and if you know what you are doing, you can pick the right assets, there is a great opportunity here. we've done this for a long time and we've seen these cycles before. real estate is cyclical and you can make a lot of money when you pick the inflection point of markets.

and i remember it in the early 90's. i remembered it in the early 2000's. i remembered it in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. there is an inflection point and we are at one of those inflection points. francine: so you are buying. >> we are buying. we foreclosed on some loans for multi family in the u.s. recently, we are very excited about that and we continued look at a budget things. francine: do you see anything in europe? >> absolutely. the biggest, most liquid markets are in the united states. because they are the most liquid that doesn't mean you will always find the most opportunities, but in europe there is less capital and therefore there will be opportunities here as well. francine: but how do you make a

difference between the ones that will get better and the ones that you should forget? >> i would just say depends on the types of real estate. quality winds always, it always has, it always will. francine: what did you spend most time thinking about? >> personally i spend my time sometimes helping at teens with business, i would say about one third with clients, helping them understand what we're doing, where we are going. and one third is just internal people running the organization, i will call it. and with that, we spent an enormous amount of time building our people and transitioning are people within all of our businesses, and it is not something that happens once. it is happening all the time. our whole goal, our culture other places bring people out that are very young, give them

opportunities they would never get anywhere else. grow them throughout the organization. make sure they are under an oriole, -- entrepreneurial, hard-working, and want to win. if you have that, you have a great culture and that is what we spend a huge medevac time trying to build within the organization. francine:francine: bring them up to test them, or just to make them learn? >> we can bring them up to take on roles. eventually, i will become an executive chairman and i will still be around, but somebody else -- francine: francine: will you ever retire? >> i will become an executive chairman. that means i am here to help mentor young people, help with business development. look after clients that can be helpful to the overall organization and some point in time, this is a hard business. we are in 30 countries, we have

lots of. it is better to have younger people grow the business. i am probably slower today than i was then. not that i've slowed down, but i am slower today and at some point in time it is the right thing just to give the people those roles. so we are continually evolving the organization in that way. francine: is this the biggest mistake for politicians and chief executives? staying on for too long? or is leadership in a 2024 different to what it was in the early 2000? >> i think it all depends on the organization. i'm not suggesting our culture is what works for everybody else, but we have a culture where our elders stay around for a long time to help.

our young people get opportunities which they wouldn't otherwise get to elders stayed in place in a full-time role. that is what we do, but maybe it doesn't work for everyone, and that is ok. francine: thank you so much for joining us today. her uncle's unhappy. i'm sensing an underlying issue. it's t-mobile. it started when we tried to get him under a new plan. but they they unexpectedly unraveled their “price lock” guarantee. which has made him, a bit... unruly. you called yourself the “un-carrier”. you sing about “price lock” on those commercials. “the price lock, the price lock...” so, if you could change the price, change the name! it's not a lock, i know a lock. so how can we undo the damage? we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that's uncalled for.

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