The Knowledge Project
Connor Teskey: Inside Brookfield’s Culture, Capital Allocation, and Competitive Edge
17 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the current state of Brookfield Asset Management?
Why don't we start with the State of the Union for Brookfield? You guys manage about a trillion dollars. Where is it allocated and how is it allocated? So our business today is really built around raising capital from the largest pools of money around the world and then turning around and deploying that capital into the largest and most attractive investment themes around the world.
Chapter 2: How does Connor Teskey define effective investing?
As a result, we are a very global business. We raise money all over the world, and then equally, we deploy it into 60 of the biggest countries and markets. Undoubtedly, our biggest markets continue to be the United States and Western Europe, but we are truly a global business today with operations across Asia-Pac, India, the Middle East, and South America as well.
When I spoke to Bruce last, he mentioned that he wanted the next generation to be better than him. And I'm curious, what have you learned that's non-obvious working with him? That's a pretty high bar to exceed. I think what Bruce has built is amazing and, quite frankly, underappreciated. In particular, not only the investment platform and the asset base, but equally the culture.
And I think it's that culture that will ensure that we can keep growing and keep building the way Bruce and other members of senior management have built up the firm for the last two plus decades. In terms of some of the things that Bruce has done, and not just Bruce, but Bruce and other members of senior management, is they're incredibly balanced.
When there are big moves in the market, they're very measured in terms of how they respond and how they think through changing dynamics. Secondly, I would say very forward-looking. We learn a lot from the past, but we don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it, if I can say it that way.
And then that importance of culture, the scale of what has been built and often why I feel it's so underappreciated is because – One of the big cultural aspects of Brookfield is almost worry about putting others in a position to succeed more than yourself. And Bruce certainly embodies that, as do others. And therefore, I don't think they always get the credit. for what they've built.
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Brookfield use to manage market risks?
But we're very fortunate now to have this exceptional platform that is on the absolute front of some of the largest, most enduring and most attractive investment themes that have been running for three or four or five years and are going to continue to run for one or two decades going forward. Where would you say you're different from him? There's no question.
He's been doing it for 20 years longer than I have. In a lot of ways, I think we've found each other to be very complementary. The job is, of course, we run a very large investment organization. And therefore, the most important thing we do is... deploy capital at exceptional returns. That is the bedrock. That is the foundation of our business. That is always what we're going to be known for.
But in order to do that at an increasing scale and over a long duration of time, you have to be better at so many other things as well. You have to be very good at building teams. You have to be very good at communicating strategy
communicating and interacting with your clients your lp partners your counterparties it's that breadth beyond just the investment role and i've been very fortunate to watch how bruce excels in in all of that and and hopefully absorb some of it over over the last you know 12 plus years of working together Has the nature of how you invest changed?
And I mean, in the sense of, it seems like we've gone from a traditional sort of LP structure that seems to be a lot more co-invest now, and there's different products available. I don't know that the nature of how we invest has changed.
There are some things that have changed, but one of the things we love about our business and our approach is we've been very consistent over an exceptionally long period of time. We focus on high quality assets that make up the backbone of the global economy. critical assets or services that really drive the growth and productivity of the communities and countries within which they exist.
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Chapter 4: How does Brookfield identify and nurture talent?
Now, it's easy to say that we've been very disciplined and focused on that approach and that theme, but there are things that have obviously changed. the assets and services that make up the backbone of the global economy are constantly evolving. We give the example that, you know, probably two thirds, maybe even 70% of what we invest in today was not an investable asset class 15 or 20 years ago.
20 years ago, we invested in hydro dams. Today, we invest in solar and nuclear and batteries. 20 years ago, we invested in ports and railroads. We, of course, still invest in ports and railroads, but we also invest in data centers and fiber and telecom towers. So while we've been very consistent and focused on the backbone of the global economy, that, of course, changes over time.
The other thing that changes is while our downside-focused economy approach to investing targeting that backbone of the global economy has been very consistent a big part of our business over the last really ten years has been taking that approach and either
Packaging it different to meet the needs of a different and growing and increasingly diverse spectrum of LP partners and clients, and also distributing those products in different ways. I'll give the example that 10 years ago, I think we had four products. Today, we have 60. And what has happened over those four years is we've been very consistent in the verticals we focus on.
We focus on infrastructure and real estate and private equity.
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Chapter 5: What role does AI play in Brookfield's operations?
But within each of those verticals, we used to just have a flagship strategy. Now we look to have a flagship strategy.
a mezzanine debt strategy a super core strategy a strategy focused on the retail wealth channel and that's led to using that same consistent and approach and focus of investing but distributing it packaging it across a wider spectrum of products such that it can be used to service a a wider spectrum of partner and and clients
Chapter 6: How does Brookfield approach capital allocation in uncertain markets?
One thing I'm curious about is your meteoric rise. You went from CIBC, jumped into Brookfield, and you've just been on this trajectory that is hard to imagine. What do you think contributed to that? Like, what did you have that other people didn't have? At least part of the answer has to be good fortune, of course.
And good fortune in that I was fortunate to work on some transactions and initiatives that were very successful. Good fortune to, in a few different places, be right place, right time. Things more tangible, however...
had incredible mentorship first and foremost and the obvious one that jumps out there is bruce but it goes so much beyond that you know right from the first boss i had at brookfield that gentleman was you know as much boss as as mentor and friend to me and really helped me develop and while it was early in my career i think a lot of the things he taught me paid huge dividends down the line what are some of those things he taught you
I do think one thing that perhaps junior investment professionals spend a lot of time focusing on is trying to get the model or the analysis perfect.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of culture in Brookfield's success?
There's almost a false degree of precision in today's world of Excel. Yeah. So many times you just have to overlay good judgment and you have to recognize there are certain things outside of your control that your Excel model will seem like a certainty, but aren't.
And then another thing I really attribute to that first mentor and boss I had at Brookfield is, and I might get the exact words wrong, but something along the lines of, There's no absolute certainties in this business. So when something feels 90% right, you do that transaction or you do that deal. And the most important thing is you do 10 of them.
And you're going to be right nine times out of 10. And that's really, really good. If you wait to try and de-risk everything to the absolute nth degree... amazing. You'll de-risk your transactions. You'll also do none of them.
Other things that I think were, you know, maybe just going a little bit further on that point is one of the things that was very formative, I would say, in my career was after joining Brookfield, I did four and a half, five years initially in the private equity group in Toronto. And in 2016, I moved to London.
And concurrent with that move, I switched to the renewable power team at Brookfield and was part of a small group that was focused on building out a European platform. That was amazing. There is an incredible forcing function of not working in the same office as your boss, if I could say it that way. You're not going to send an email to ask to send an email.
You're not going to wait five hours for the time zone to catch up to check something if you're pretty sure it's right. And maybe this is personal to me, when you begin to take the initiative and do those things on your own prerogative, you think you're going to have a really low shooting percentage.
And then almost shockingly positive to the upside, you actually have a much higher shooting percentage than you expect. And that's fun. You know, you start getting stuff done, you start making progress, you start building things with the team around you, and you get some momentum and that almost spirit and excitement just snowballs from there.
I think the story is you were told to go to renewables, not necessarily asked. How did you feel about that? So this was in 2016. And when I was asked to move to London, concurrent with that move, I switched teams. And people always say, oh, did you want to join renewables? The honest answer is no, I didn't have some weird desire to or some strong specific desire to go to renewables.
But Bruce and Cyrus Madden, who built our private equity business, asked if I would. And I, of course, said yes. And if they'd asked me to go into infrastructure or real estate, I'd probably have a different business card today. I love the firm and I do whatever they ask me to. Again, I was very fortunate that I joined the renewables team, you know, in the...
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Chapter 8: What are Connor Teskey's ambitions for Brookfield over the next two decades?
You had great mentors. Something specific to you that other people have mentioned to me is just your work ethic. Talk to me about that. There's a lot of people that work really, really hard. I've always felt that that's something within your control that can be a differentiating factor. And it's really two things. One, yes, if you work hard, you have a bigger capacity to do more stuff.
That's the obvious one. The other thing comment or dynamic that I think is sometimes underappreciated is just being available for other people on the team. And there's always people, both junior and senior to you that have questions, want to bounce an idea off you, want career advice, deal specific advice, and just being available for people and always being willing to make time.
And yeah, maybe that means you're you know, taking calls while you're walking through an airport or late at night. But I think it's funny. I don't know that when people think I work hard, it's, you know, I was crunching more Excel models or building more PowerPoint. I almost think it's the availability that people perceive as or represent as working hard. Did you have any setbacks along the way?
Oh, tons. What are some of the ones that stand out? For sure. There's always deals that didn't go well or, you know, let me almost put it as a different way. I remember very early in my career, again, another great mentor. This was very shortly after I joined Brookfield. They made a comment to me, Connor, you're doing really well. I had a bit of a unique background before I joined Brookfield.
I didn't really have a financial modeling background or evaluation background. And then I joined a private equity group in an investment position. So I had a pretty steep learning curve at the beginning. And I remember maybe 12 or 14 months in, someone said, you're doing really well. You know, you're picking up the skills. You're... producing great work.
But when you go to present it, nobody knows what you're talking about. You're trying to explain too much. Your explanations are too complicated. I remember when I got that advice initially, it put me in a tailspin. I was crushed. I thought that was the end of my career. And then, you know, you wake up the next day with a fresh perspective and you go, well,
it was tough to hear that, that people don't understand what I'm talking about, but so great to learn that now and focus on it. And then you realize that it's not just the ability to do the work, but explain the work. And if you can't, if you can't do both, you know, it's kind of irrelevant.
You mentioned sort of getting to 90% and that's sort of the target you want to get to and you want to do 10 deals. How do you think about de-risking deals? Do you isolate particular variables or how does that work? So much of what we do at Brookfield is de-risking different business activities in such a way that we can turn the construction of a project or the operations of a project
into a long-term inflation-linked stream of cash flows. We are very comfortable taking execution risk, operating risk, development risk. We don't like to take market risk. And we work very, very hard to structure our deals or execute in such a way that we're not taking market risk. And I'll give an example of that.
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