Liquidity during the pandemic hasn’t quite been a problem for the firm that’s the subject of the Forbes India cover story, which has been on an asset-acquisition binge over the past year. Brookfield Asset Management, a New York stock exchange-listed and Toronto, Canada-headquartered investment management firm, has been bullish on India since 2014 (it set up its India office in 2009, but took its time to do its first deal five years later). Till date it has deployed nearly $20 billion, or roughly ₹140,000 crore, across sectors like real estate, infrastructure and renewable power. Real estate itself has sucked in nearly $7 billion, 85 percent of that amount committed to commercial offices.
And here’s the astonishing part. Over half of that stash, or nearly $11.5 billion, was pumped in in the pandemic year. Even as most of us were confined within domestic limits, teams at Brookfield were doing diligence on 12.8 million square feet of commercial buildings of the Bengaluru-headquartered RMZ Corp the firm went on to acquire the 41 buildings to add to its arsenal of one of the largest portfolios in India. As Ankur Gupta, head of Brookfield’s real estate vertical and one of the firm’s managing partners, tells Pooja Sarkar who has penned the cover story, “to do this in a very short timeline—legal diligence, architectural diligence, physical diligence—proves how far we have come with our capability in India". For details of many more such transactions and what went on behind the scenes—Sarkar’s ‘Slow and Steady: The Brookfield Way’ is a must-read.
Best,
Brian Carvalho
Editor, Forbes India
Email: Brian.Carvalho@nw18.com
Twitter id: @Brianc_Ed
First Published: Jun 21, 2021, 10:45
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