Global alternative asset manager Brookfield Asset Management named company executive Connor Teskey as its CEO as the investment giant reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it sees rising deal activity this year.
Teskey, who's based in London and joined the firm in 2012 before rising to president in 2022, will succeed Bruce Flatt as CEO as part of a long-planned leadership transition, the New York-based company said Thursday. Flatt, 60, will continue in his role as board chair, in addition to his position as CEO of Brookfield Corp. Teskey, 38, will remain CEO of Brookfield’s renewable energy business.
“There’s no real transition,” Flatt said on a conference call, adding that Teskey has been “running literally everything” since he became president of Brookfield. Teskey may be the youngest CEO in asset management, Bank of America analyst Craig Siegenthaler said on Brookfield's fourth-quarter earnings call.
Brookfield, with more than $1 trillion in real estate and other assets under management, is majority owned by Toronto-based Brookfield Corp. The personnel change comes as Brookfield Asset Management also reported record fundraising of $35 billion in the fourth quarter, its strongest quarter ever, and raised its quarterly dividend by 15%.
The company said its closely watched distributable earnings, or profit available to investors, reached a new high, thanks to a 28% jump to a record $867 million in fee-related earnings. Flatt and Teskey said in a joint letter the fee-related earnings are “the lowest-risk and most stable form of earnings” for the industry and represents “essentially all” of Brookfield’s distributable earnings.
The results come after Brookfield spent a record $66 billion shopping last year while selling or exiting about $80 billion of assets at what Flatt described as “very good returns.”
He added that “we entered 2026 with a constructive backdrop. Interest rates have stabilized. Economic growth is resilient. Transaction activity has increased due to improved confidence in valuations and market liquidity.”
Renewed global demand
That backdrop is driving “renewed global demand for real assets that generate stable cash flows and provide inflation protection,” he said. Flatt also said individual investors increasingly are “gaining access to private assets” through retirement funds and other vehicles and that represents a “significant expansion of the addressable market for private assets.”
On the investment front, Brookfield will continue to bet on “powerful, structural mega-trends,” Flatt and Teskey said in the letter.
“Digitalization is accelerating the need for data, connectivity" and artificial intelligence infrastructure, they said. “Deglobalization is reshaping supply chains and increasing demand for localized, resilient industrial and logistics assets. Growing power demand remains a key global priority, requiring large investment to participate in the generational buildout of power generation and energy transition solutions to support sustainable growth.
They added that "together, these trends represent multi-trillion-dollar investment opportunities globally and support our deep investment pipeline.”
Brookfield recently unveiled an AI Infrastructure Fund that will anchor its $100 billion AI Infrastructure Program backed by founding partners Nvidia and the Kuwait Investment Authority.
“The buildout of AI infrastructure is one of the largest infrastructure investment cycles in history, driving unprecedented demand for power, data centers, compute infrastructure, and grid modernization,” they wrote in the letter, adding infrastructure will be a significant contributor to Brookfield’s growth in 2026 and 2027.
On the real estate front, Brookfield recently bought Generator Hostels, which Teskey described on the call as “a differentiated hospitality platform benefiting from structural growth in experiential travel and urban tourism.” Brookfield also bought National Storage REIT, Australia’s largest self-storage company, he said.
More investment
“2025 was a record year for investment activity, it gives us a strong foundation as we look ahead,” he said. “In real estate, we have significant dry powder at a point in the cycle where we're seeing attractive entry points, particularly in larger, high-quality assets where there are a limited number of players with scaled available capital.”
A case in point, Brookfield this week said it bought Peakstone Realty and its 76-property national portfolio in a $1.2 billion deal.
As far as exiting investments, Brookfield also shows no signs of easing. It’s in talks to sell London’s CityPoint office tower.
Last quarter, Brookfield sold properties including the 4.6 million-square-foot Cheongna Logistics Center near Seoul, South Korea, to private equity giant KKR and its Korean affiliate Kreate Asset Management. KKR has described that deal as “the largest single asset logistics transaction in Korea to date.”
Blackstone, the world’s largest commercial property owner, recently also sounded a positive tone as it reported record results.
Jon Gray, Blackstone’s president and operating chief, described the deal environment as having “reached escape velocity on the back of moderating cost of capital” while the “AI revolution is creating generational opportunities to invest private capital at scale, both debt and equity, while creating attractive gains across multiple sectors.”