The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 38 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Bruce Flatt: Public markets are never efficient
“The markets are never efficient. In fact, very seldom do they ever trade at the actual value of securities. Either, most of the time, they trade above or below. Very seldom do they trade at the value.”
Flatt: US Business Productivity Over Next 20 Years Probably Unprecedented
“But the productivity advances we see over the next 20 years probably will be unprecedented for a period of time. Certainly one, we haven't seen it for a long time, ah, in business, ah, across America.”
Flatt: US holds unmatched long-term dominance in tech, capital, and energy
“The long-term story of America is extremely strong because the U.S. Today has Energy, capital, and technology dominance. Energy, capital, and technology dominance. There's nobody in the world that has a technology businesses that the U.S. Has. There's nothing …”
Flatt: Worst Real Estate Disruption From Rate Hikes Is Far Behind
“Look, over the last five years, because of COVID and because other things, and because interest rates went up by 405 hundred base points all of that disrupted the real estate market, but the worst is behind us by far. We're looking in the rearview mirror by wh…”
Flatt: 401(k)s and Global Retirement Plans Will Open to Alternatives
“For one case in the US are going to open up to alternatives. I think plans around the world will open up to alternatives.”
Flatt: Investment upside takes care of itself; downside risk is what matters
“Upside will always take care of itself, and whether you shoot for 16%, 22, 29, 18, none of those matter. They're all great. What's really important is what are the risks How, what can go wrong? How bad could it get? And how do we deal with it if that happens?”
Flatt: Politics barely matter when investing in domestic backbone infrastructure
“We invest in backbone infrastructure, largely, and even our private equity businesses are backbone infrastructure type businesses. Therefore, what's important for us is to go to good countries with good people that you can operate with the standards we operate…”
Bruce Flatt: Most listed companies do not need capital access
“Most businesses that are listed don't need access to capital. They're only listed because they're large and they happen to be just, they need owners and therefore they're in the public markets. They're never issuing equity and therefore the Price of the securi…”
Flatt: AI and Robotics Will Enable Manufacturing Reshoring to the US
“If you can shrink the labor component many of those plants can come back to where the demand is specifically I'd say the United States.”
Flatt: China will thrive independently as a consumer service economy
“I think China, it's a, it's an economy in itself today. It's 1.5 billion people. They're getting richer every day. They're turning into a consumer service society. There's not that much of manufacturing that's relevant to them. I think they will do extremely w…”
Flatt: Credit Spreads Are the Lowest in History
“Today, Base rates are high. We're back to five. Guess what? Spreads are the lowest they've ever been in history. We just did a thirty-year Brookfield Corporation financing, so we're borrowing money for 30 years, fixed for that time period, and it's a 125 over.”
Flatt: Passive investing creates wide price-to-value disparities for non-index companies
“For some companies, smaller, mid-size, don't fit indexes, they will be lost within public markets investing. Because active, ah, investors may not be investing in those sectors anymore, and if you don't fit the indexes, you have no buyers. Increasingly, though…”
Flatt: AI's Real Money Is in Applying It to Business Processes
“Ah, but really what the, where the money is going to be made is the application of artificial intelligence into business. And simply stated that's taking processes in service and industrial businesses And making them more efficient by using advanced robotics w…”
Flatt: AI Infrastructure Capital Inflows Are Historically Unprecedented
“But from an infrastructure standpoint, the amount of money being put behind this, ah, is, ah, in amounts which have almost never been seen invested before.”
Flatt: Brookfield produces just under half of global car starter batteries
“Look, our we make just under half of the car batteries.”
Flatt: Solar and wind are the lowest-cost power sources globally
“Solar and wind, which is where we're Which is what's filling the gap are the lowest cost energy sources for power in the world in most countries today.”
Flatt: Batteries and nuclear power will eventually replace gas base load
“Eventually batteries and nuclear Will be the base load, and it won't be natural gas, but it's being shipped elsewhere in the world, and where it's going to is needed for base load, because they need that, that base load power, or it's replacing coal, which is …”
Flatt: Most available data center sites are pre-contracted for 20 years
“Most sites today that are available to be built are already contracted to somebody for the next 20 years.”
Flatt: Commodity Real Estate Underperforms While Top Quartile Thrives
“If you own almost today commodity anything, it's bad. If you own commodity office, bad. If you own commodity retail, bad. You own commodity industrial, bad. In fact, if you own commodity hotels, bad. If you, what's great today is all of those things in the top…”
Flatt: Short-Term Interest Rates Will Fall Another 50 to 100 Basis Points
“I'm sure we're going to see another few hundred, a few, another 50, a hundred base points off of the short rates, and we're going to settle into just a regular range of rates.”
Flatt: Great long-term investors preserve capital and deploy during market recoveries
“Coming out of recessions or cycles, coming out of the bottom, what's most important is just have everything you have intact. Do not lose anything, do not lose too much, and keep going, because there'll be many people who will have lost stuff. What's even bette…”
Flatt: Brookfield is building $13B in power plants for Microsoft
“We're building from Microsoft thirteen billion dollars of power plants.”
Flatt: Brookfield is building a $32B fabrication plant with Intel
“We're building with Intel a thirty two billion dollar fabrication plant in Arizona.”
Flatt: Brookfield's parent company achieved 19% annualized returns over 30 years
“The point is, we've earned, our parent companies earn 19% return, annualized returns for 30 years.”
Flatt: Brookfield has avoided irreparable harm over 35 years by limiting mistake size
“When we're wrong, where are we wrong? We're wrong in increment, in small ways which aren't, have, you don't know about them very much, because in the last 35 years, we've been right generally on the large things, and nothing has been irreparably harm harmful, …”
Flatt: Simultaneous massive transactions amount to an unintended cycle bet
“If everybody made a massive transaction at the same point in time, what we're probably betting on is a cycle. And you may not want that. And if you do, you better knowingly do it.”
Flatt: Brookfield uses osmotic learning and has no private offices
“In general, we don't do training. Quote, unquote. But every day, every single person in this organization is learning. And it's a learned by osmosis process. We have open plan in the place, including myself, never had an office and people talk to one another a…”
Flatt: Flawed investment decisions are far worse than mistiming the market
“The unsuccessful ones are harder to identify what happened. But often there are reasons why, and it either comes down to execution. You didn't execute properly. You had you missed time the market. Or you just made a bad, bad, flawed investment decision. And th…”
Flatt: Investment committee financial models are never entirely accurate forecasts
“The only thing I'd tell you about a model that's produced in an investment committee is it will never be exactly what happens.”
Flatt: 50% of Brookfield's current investment asset classes did not exist 20 years ago
“50% of the things that we invest in today did not exist as an investment asset class for investors like us 20 years ago.”
Flatt: Brookfield owns a substantial portion of India's telecom towers
“We own all of the telecom towers, not all, but we own a very substantial portion of the telecom towers in India. They deliver all the phone and wireless infrastructure. To many individuals in India, and that was originally built by Reliance Industries Geo. We …”
Flatt: Brookfield successfully took a $6B unindexed shipping company private
“So we took a large container shipping company private. It had one analyst and nobody following it. It fit in no indexes. It was a six billion dollar company. And we took it private and it's been an exceptional investment.”
Flatt: Major productivity transformations take longer but deliver larger impact
“Usually, usually it happens in greater amounts, but it takes longer periods of time, and takes slower than you think it would happen.”
Flatt: All Brookfield Balance Sheet Debt Is Single-Asset Financing
“All of our financing is asset by asset by asset by asset or business by business by business by business. So any debt that we accumulate onto our consolidated balance sheet is just the accumulation of a whole bunch of single asset financings.”
Flatt: Brookfield partners cannot pass controlling shares to family members
“When we leave the partnership, our shares that if you're an owner or controller of the partnership, they go away, they go on to somebody else. So nobody's family will ever will ever be part of this partnership. It's a meritocracy.”
Flatt: Brookfield's worst mistakes happen when pushing into adjacent unfamiliar areas
“Sometimes we're pushing Out into areas which are adjunct to what we do, and we probably shouldn't have. We really didn't know what we were doing. And not often does it happen, but once in a while.”
Flatt: Managing $1T prevents Brookfield from investing in small countries
“Like, we can't have small countries, just not because they're not good, they're not a good place to invest, it's just not meaningful to us. When you have a trillion dollars things, The benefit or the, or the- Drawback. Yeah, the drawback is that is that you ca…”