Brookfield Asset Management is pushing ahead with plans to spin off its asset management business into a separate company.
The Toronto-based alternative investment group will spin a 25% stake in its asset management unit by the year end in an attempt to simplify its sprawling structure. The new public company is poised to become one of the largest Wall Street listings of the year.
The group’s asset management unit manages $379bn (£310bn) in fee-bearing assets across real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy, credit and private equity on behalf of institutional investors. Brookfield also has more than $40bn of directly owned net assets, including direct real estate holdings such as London’s Canary Wharf and large stakes in publicly traded partnerships it has spun off over the past decade.
The plan was disclosed in an earnings release on Thursday morning but was first reported in February.
Brookfield hopes the move will give shareholders an independent valuation of its fee-based earnings divorced from their more complex holding of real estate and public market interests.
“The financial markets have evolved. What people like are asset-light models,” chief executive Bruce Flatt told the Financial Times in February. “It appears there is an enormous amount of shareholder value to be unlocked.”
Some analysts have valued the entirety of Brookfield’s asset management business at more than $75bn.
