Brookfield's Connor Teskey talks India market opportunities with Bloomberg TV - BROOKFIELD ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD

Now, the pressures in private markets have been covered all year. Higher rates, a lack of cash returns, and concerns over sectors like software. But alternative investment giant Brookfield Asset Management raised a record $77 billion in the second quarter, with the firm also pushing into the insurance sector and the AI build-out, where it sees a $7 trillion opportunity. Joining us now is Conor Teske, the chief executive of Brookfield Asset Management. Conor, great to catch up, as always. Thank you so much for joining us. Let's start with India. India's a big, big, big market for Brookfield. How much do you have here? So we have $35 billion invested on the ground already. We've been here since 2009, so coming up on two decades. And it is one of our key growth markets. We expect we'll be at north of $100 billion within the next five years. And this is money that you want to invest in what infrastructure? I mean, I know also the prime minister is trying to really build out to increase growth quite significantly. When we think of India, we don't think investors should think of it as a developing market anymore. The scale of the market, the pace of the growth, its access to a very large and educated labour force, low-cost energy, we see tremendous opportunities across the spectrum. And it's a lot of the drivers you'd see elsewhere around the world. We think the country's in the very early innings of a domestic infrastructure build-out. We think as AI goes from innovation to deployment, India's global leading IT sector will have a major role to play. And we think the low-cost position that India has in energy markets will help it be an exporter of so many key goods around the world as it has been in the past. Where do you see it? Is it mainly infrastructure? I guess if you look at all the concerns that we have, supply chains, geopolitics. It can also be distilled in businesses. I would say two things. Like almost everywhere else around the world, where are we seeing the greatest capital needs? Energy and infrastructure. And India is no different. The one additional place where India is clearly in a league of its own, however, is as the leading economies and companies around the world look to diversify and increase the resiliency of their supply chains. India is the great second alternative for so many markets, and we expect it to see a lot of growth from that perspective as well. Where do you see growth around the world? Again, energy and infrastructure, but we'll be a little bit more helpful there. Make no mistake about it, the fastest growing sector at Brookfield is AI infrastructure and digital infrastructure and the energy that supports it. But we're seeing demand across the entire infrastructure spectrum, including what nobody likes to talk about anymore, traditional infrastructure. Things like your utility grids, your gas pipelines, your transportation assets. Those are almost forgotten in today's discussion, but seeing tremendous demand as well. When you look around the world, is it in the U.S. compared to emerging markets or even in Europe? Are you going to see more public-private partnerships like we've seen in the past? So maybe split that into two parts. Where are we seeing the greatest demand? It is very broad-based. These global trends of the digitalization of everything, the world needing more energy than ever before, a rewiring of supply chains, those apply to every major market around the world. But where are we seen the greatest amount of growth? The markets being driven by the AI build-out. So that is, by and large, the United States and Asia pack. but also impacting Europe, the GCC, other markets as well. The second part of your question was really about, I mean, if you look at energy, for example, right? Energy and how do you build that energy? Is it through electrification or is there other parts of the energy supply chain that we need to look at? Yeah, so maybe come at that two different ways. the world needs more power than ever before and certainly we're in an era where demand outweighs supply and that means you're going to see every type of electricity generation viewed very positively in this environment there's going to be more gas there's gonna be more renewables there's gonna be nuclear we see four sectors growing the most fuel cells because they're fast renewables because theyre cheap batteries because they stabilize grids and nuclear because they provide energy security. But that is only part of the solution. We also need to see a build out of transmission grids. We're seeing an increased amount of investment behind the meter where those grids can't keep up with the energy demand needs. It is really one of the greatest build environments we have ever seen, where there is not only a huge amount of capital that is required, but increasingly that capital needs to be paired with great operating capabilities in order to pull these projects out of the ground because there's no shortage of demand. There's no shortages of capital, there's not shortage of demands, so the question is who can pull these project out of ground. And it has to be, is it government and private money together? It's going to be both, but I would say it's private money partnering not only with governments but increasingly with corporates as well. Governments want to have more infrastructure and critical services for their citizens, and there's a growing need for that at the same time that government balance sheets are stretched around the world. That's creating a large opportunity for private capital. But equally, the largest corporates around the World, they want their own infrastructure. They want control of their own supply chains, their own inputs, and that's creating another opportunity for a private capital to partner, to fund and facilitate this generational build-out. Connor, how should we look at AI right now? So if you look at the AI infrastructure, you know, the build-outs, does it pause for breath? Does it go in different places? Yeah. So it's certainly noisy. There's a lot of headlines. But to rebase things for everyone, demand was so far ahead of supply and is going to stay very far ahead of supply throughout the end of this decade and beyond. So even if there are pauses due to permitting, even if There are short-term pauses as markets settle out a bit, demand significantly outweighs supply. And if you are a provider of capacity, of compute, of energy, you can build as much as you want in this environment. And as a result of that overwhelming demand, we're really being very selective. The best assets in the best markets with the best contracts and the best counterparties. But despite some of the headlines, we don't see things slowing down whatsoever. When you look at some ofthe emerging markets, and I know, India, you made a very compelling case for it actually to be a developed country. Yes. Do you see more opportunities than maybe in some ofThe G7 countries? Absolutely. I would say when we think of India, obviously the United States is our largest market around the world, and there are a few other very large established markets, but India would rank right at the top of Brookfield's list in terms of areas for growth and areas for focus just because of the depth of the opportunity here and the scale of the market. And perhaps one of the things that's been underappreciated about the Indian market is just how liquid it is. You can not only invest and build and buy things, but there's equally a great market to monetize and recycle that capital back into further growth. I mean, private markets in general, there's concern about interest rates going up, about some of the software. What does that mean for Brookfield? Can you take advantage of that? So undoubtedly, the increase in interest rates is going to make it more difficult for some to invest and some to operate. And our access to capital will certainly put us in a fortunate position to try and capitalize on that opportunity. But we think it's very important to recognize, while interest rates are a little bit higher today than they were six or 12 months ago, they're still in a constructive range. Yeah. Some of the elevation in interest rates is due to wars that will end at some point and tariffs that will end at a some point. And there's a lot of growth in the market and that can overwhelm slightly higher costs of capital. Connor, thank you so much for joining us. Connor Teske there, Chief Executive of Brookfield Asset Management.