With $US 330B in assets under management, the Canadian investor and operator has told the Australian Financial Review that it intends to invest 25% of that money in Asia – including Australia –with a focus on age care and retirement businesses that are property-based.
Brookfield is currently the lead buyer for our second largest group of private hospitals, Healthscope, valued at $4.5B.
In 2007 they purchased Multiplex here and in 2009 bought out Babcock & Brown’s infrastructure business.
We currently have Aveo and Stockland’s retirement villages for sale – both valued at over $1B.
An interesting back story: Brookfield came into being in 1899 when two Canadians, William Mackenzie and Frederick Stark Pearson, raised money on the Toronto Stock Exchange to establish the São Paulo Railway, Light and Power Co. in Brazil.
They introduced the first electric street cars to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. By the 1940s, it supplied two-thirds of the country’s electric power.
