Brookfield Corporation Aktie

Good day, and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation First Quarter 2026 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation; and Sachin Shah, Chief Executive Officer of our Wealth Solutions business. Bruce will start it off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. And finally, Sachin will provide an update on our Wealth Solutions business.

After our formal comments, we will turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we request that you refrain from asking more than 2 questions.

I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements.

For further information on these risks and their potential impact on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Katie, and welcome, everyone, on the call. We had a strong start to the year. Distributable earnings were $1.6 billion for the quarter and $6 billion over the last 12 months. More importantly, it also looks like the business will get stronger over the year. Our business has performed well, and we continue to execute against initiatives which will drive our next phase of growth.

Our Asset Management business delivered strong earnings growth supported by continued fundraising momentum across our institutional client base. Our operating businesses generated stable cash flows backed by resilient underlying fundamentals. Our Wealth Solutions business performed well as it continues to scale globally. In April, we closed the acquisition of Just Group, a leading pension risk transfer platform in the U.K. This increased total insurance assets by $40 billion, and we're now heading to $200 billion and strengthens our position in one of the world's most active, attractive retirement markets. Nick will cover our financial results in more detail, and Sachin will spend more time on Just Group and the continued growth of our Wealth Solutions business.

Before that, I would note that the current environment has had no shortage of macro developments competing for investors' attention from geopolitics to trade issues, inflation and interest rates. And while these factors are important to monitor, they often receive far, far more attention than their long-term impact warrants. Bottom line, we largely try to ignore them when building our business. This is particularly true in periods when capital flows, sentiment and prevailing market narratives influence price, which can increase the impression that the business fundamentals have changed when in most cases, they have not.

Value, on the other hand, you all know, is determined by the cash flows of a business that it generates and management's ability to reinvest that capital at attractive returns. Our role as investors is to capitalize on attractive entry points to acquire good businesses for value, operate them well and allow compounding to work over time. Equally important is ensuring that compounding is not disrupted by being forced to act in detrimental ways during periods of market stress. This discipline shapes how we allocate capital and build our businesses. We take the time to watch an industry, learn how it works, invest in a measured way, refine a business model and only then scale a platform. This allows us to make small mistakes while avoiding large ones.

In our experience, successful businesses are not built quickly. They are built deliberately with the resilience to allow one to compound cash flows and create value through economic cycles. And by adhering to these principles, our shareholders have earned excellent compound returns over long periods of time. Over that same period, we've navigated many market environments, each felt dramatic at the time, but the most important point is that each period of market disruption in hindsight had very little impact on long-term outcomes. Today, we believe many of the market distortions we are seeing are temporary and will moderate in the sectors we focus on. And while the current environment may feel volatile, it is ultimately constructive for businesses like ours.

In addition, as uncertainty around growth and inflation rises, capital tends to shift towards high-quality cash-generative assets, an environment that favors real assets, which we are specialists in. We are now seeing large flows of funds due to the halo effect. That's hard assets, low obsolescence and are seeing this across the board within our businesses. Real estate is a good example of this. Sentiment is now catching up with fundamentals. Financing markets are much, much stronger. New supply is limited across our core markets and demand for the best assets continues to grow.

In office, as an example, replacement costs have risen significantly across our core markets. As a result, the rents required to justify new construction are well above, in many markets, double current market rents. This makes new supply very difficult to deliver. And with demand remaining strong, in fact, very strong for the best buildings in the best markets, rents continue to rise substantially. To put this in perspective, at Manhattan West, one of our super core assets in our portfolio, it would cost around $2,500 a square foot to build that same building today compared to our cost of just over $1,000 a square foot. Fortunately, we started this at the depths of COVID in 2020 when few decided that they should build an office building. So we benefited in many ways due to our countercyclical investment.

Our most recent lease there was signed at rents nearly 3x higher than the first lease in the complex and the financing recently completed cash out approximately $400 million of net cash, which was due to the increase in value of the asset. This took our debt to almost the construction cost of the building, exemplifying the increase in cash flows since launching the building. And I'd note we continue to own the property. More important, despite rents where they are, they actually need to go higher to justify a new tower like this being constructed today.

And we are seeing the same dynamic play out across our global portfolio. Another example being One Leadenhall in London, a brand-new asset, which we consider as Core Plus in our portfolio was leased -- was fully leased within 6 months of completion and achieved the highest rents ever in the city of London. With very limited new supply and demand for the best buildings continuing to grow, premier assets are becoming increasingly scarce and values are set to continue to rise.

Capital markets are also beginning to recognize this as well. The aforementioned financing of Two Manhattan West was $1.9 billion for a 10-year nonrecourse mortgage, with a 5.5% coupon and was done at 107 basis point spread to treasuries. Buyers looking for solid assets are moving back from software to real assets like these. Given all the drama in the news over the last 5 years, I will repeat that comment. The cash flows of this property allows us to complete a nonrecourse investment-grade financing and generate real cash of $400 million from the property. This is the benefit of owning great real estate through cycles. As fundamentals strengthen and capital markets improve, the embedded value of portfolios that was always there become increasingly evident.

At the same time, uncertainty is increasing the urgency for companies and governments to reposition around AI, energy security, data sovereignty and supply chain resilience. These priorities sit at the intersection of the themes we have invested behind for years, namely digitalization, decarbonization and deglobalization. Of course, if you have followed us, these themes are not new, but they are more prominent today than ever and the form they take continues to evolve. Taking them in order.

Digitalization started with fiber networks and telecom towers, then hyperscale data centers. Today, artificial intelligence is driving the next wave of demand through AI factories, which require enormous amounts of computing capacity and reliable power. Second, decarbonization. The opportunity is no longer just energy transition. It is energy addition. In plain English, that means more. Electricity demand is rising at a pace not seen in decades, driven by electrification, reindustrialization and digital infrastructure. Meeting this demand will require enormous amounts of new generation capacity with solar, wind, nuclear and batteries increasingly well placed given one or all of their attributes being they are low cost, they can be deployed quickly or they have limited reliance on imported fuel.

Last, deglobalization began as reshoring, manufacturing and reorganizing supply chains. It has now evolved to include data sovereignty where governments and companies want critical data stored and processed within their own borders, leading to the build-out of domestic digital infrastructure, including large-scale data centers. We are working with major governments and enterprises around the world to help build this infrastructure.

And while digitalization, decarbonization and deglobalization will continue to evolve, each is driving significant long-term demand for new infrastructure. Our ability to provide scalable solutions across technologies and regions reinforces our position as a partner of choice. And with almost $200 billion of capital to deploy, together with what we expect to be a record fundraising year in '26, we are well positioned to scale these businesses.

Thank you all for your continued support in Brookfield. I'll now turn the call over to Nick.

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Financial results were strong for the first quarter, underpinned by continued momentum across all of our businesses. Distributable earnings or DE before realizations for the quarter were $1.4 billion or $0.59 per share, representing a 7% increase over the prior year quarter. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5.5 billion or $2.32 per share. Total DE, including realizations, was $1.6 billion or $0.66 per share for the quarter and $6 billion or $2.54 per share over the last 12 months.

Starting with our operating performance. Our Asset Management business started the year strong, generating $765 million of distributable earnings or $0.32 per share for the quarter and $2.8 billion or $1.20 per share over the last 12 months. We've raised $67 billion of capital so far this year, including $21 billion during the quarter, a $40 billion investment mandate from Just Group and $6 billion for our seventh vintage flagship private equity strategy.

Fee-bearing capital ended the quarter at $614 billion, up 12% over the prior year, driving an 11% increase in fee-related earnings to $772 million. And with strong momentum across our flagship and complementary strategies, we are well positioned to deliver a record year of fundraising in 2026.

This quarter, our results also benefited from a gain on the partial monetization of one of our technology investments, which generated approximately $120 million of DE. We own a focused portfolio of select investments in new businesses, technology and innovation driven that are positioned to benefit from major secular trends shaping the global economy. This includes our investment in SpaceX of approximately $1 billion at the pre-IPO mark, which is part of a $2 billion total investment.

Turning briefly to our Wealth Solutions business, which Sachin will expand on in his remarks. We delivered strong results with distributable earnings of $430 million or $0.18 per share in the quarter and $1.7 billion or $0.71 per share over the last 12 months, representing an 11% increase over the prior year period. Results were driven by continued growth in our asset base, including $4 billion of annuity inflows during the quarter and the ongoing rotation of the portfolio into higher-yielding investment strategies.

Our P&C business also performed well, achieving a combined ratio of 99%, contributing to an overall reduction in our cost of funds. Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and resilient cash flows with distributable earnings of $360 million or $0.15 per share for the quarter and $1.5 billion or $0.65 per share over the last 12 months.

Operating funds from operations in our infrastructure, private equity and energy businesses increased by 19% over the prior year quarter, supported by continued momentum in the underlying businesses and ongoing execution of growth initiatives across each platform.

Fundamentals in our real estate business are very strong. The recovery is quality-led with tenants, lenders and capital increasingly focused on the best assets in the strongest markets. Our Super Core and Core Plus portfolios are over 95% occupied, and we continue to sign new leases at rents materially above expiring levels, supported by a strong pipeline of tenant demand and limited new supply.

In our retail portfolio, tenant consolidation into top-tier malls continues to drive demand for our well-located, high-quality assets. And during the quarter, 1.6 million square feet of leases commenced at rents 11% above prior levels.

In office, we signed 2.6 million square feet of leases globally with average net rents 15% above the expiring levels. This included 227,000 square feet of leases in the U.S. at rents more than double expiring levels and 761,000 square feet in Canada at rents 30% above expiring levels, including a 203,000 square foot lease at Exchange Tower, a Core Plus asset in downtown Toronto. The leasing activity represents meaningful embedded upside that we expect to realize in our results as tenant take occupancy and rents commence. Our Super Core portfolio generated 2% same-store NOI growth in the quarter, and our leasing pipeline gives us strong visibility into further cash flow growth ahead.

Moving to North American residential. Longer-term market fundamentals remain supportive, underpinned by the structural undersupply of housing across North America. Performance in the quarter relative to the prior year period primarily reflected the absence of a prior year gain on the sale of 5 master planned communities as well as the delayed timing of certain lot sales this quarter. Despite short-term market challenges, the business remains well positioned to generate solid earnings in 2026.

Shifting to monetizations. Transaction activity remained active across most asset classes. During the quarter, we advanced $17 billion of asset sales across the business and substantially all sales were completed at or above carrying levels. A notable highlight, which closed after quarter end was the $2.5 billion recapitalization of IFC Seoul, a landmark mixed-use complex in Seoul, Korea. The transaction crystallized the fund's investment, realizing a 17% IRR and 2.4x multiple of capital, while allowing Brookfield alongside partners to retain upside participation in the asset. Importantly, this transaction marks another step toward carried interest realization for the fund and shows the resilience and dominance of the office portfolios we own.

During the quarter, we realized $157 million of carried interest into income and ended the quarter with $11.8 billion of accumulated unrealized carried interest. We continue to maintain conviction in the carried interest we expect to realize over the next 3 years, supported by a strong pipeline of monetizations, and we continue to expect 2026 to be an inflection point with realizations ramping up in the second half of the year.

Moving to capital allocation. During the quarter, we returned $598 million of capital to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. Year-to-date, together with BAM, we have repurchased over $1 billion of shares at very attractive prices. That is over $1 billion invested back into our businesses, including $470 million of BN shares and $575 million of BAM shares. And we will continue to allocate capital to buybacks, enhancing the value of each remaining share.

Moving on to our balance sheet and liquidity. Capital markets remain constructive with capital increasingly shifting towards quality assets and businesses underpinned by essential services and real assets that generate predictable cash flows. Year-to-date, we have executed $45 billion of financings across the franchise, including $15 billion in our real estate business. And we continue to maintain substantial liquidity and a conservatively capitalized balance sheet, providing significant flexibility to support the growth of our business.

Before I hand the call over to Sachin, I want to briefly touch on our corporate simplification. As part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our corporate structure, we are working toward combining the corporation and our Wealth Solutions business, creating a fully integrated insurance and investment organization. This builds on the successful conversion of our listed private equity business entity earlier this year and the progress we have made exploring similar initiatives with our listed infrastructure and energy vehicles.

When we established Wealth Solutions, we structured it similarly to our listed affiliates, which enabled it to benefit from the corporation's capital base and investing capabilities. That approach served us well. And over the past 5 years, we have grown the insurance business to $30 billion in value while scaling the asset base to $200 billion.

At this stage, to continue growing and maximizing returns while maintaining a low-risk profile, combining BN and BWS is optimal, providing our insurance operations with greater access to approximately $145 billion of incremental capital from our permanent capital base will enhance capital efficiency and flexibility in optimizing our capital structure to support the continued expansion of the business over the long term. Few other insurance businesses in the world have access to this scale of excess capital, combined with deep investment capabilities across real assets. We expect this will strengthen the certainty we provide to our policyholders and create significant long-term value for our shareholders.

We continue to work through the final details to implement the transaction and expect the Board of Directors of BN and BNT to conduct a final review in the coming weeks. Subject to their approvals, we intend to seek shareholder approvals at our respective Annual General Meetings scheduled on July 16.

Bringing it all together, we have had an active start to the year, delivering strong financial results while continuing to execute on our strategic priorities. As we look ahead to the balance of 2026, we expect the momentum in our financial performance to continue. And with that, I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors have declared a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share payable at the end of June to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 15, 2026.

Thank you for your time, and I will now pass the call over to Sachin.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. With the recent close of our acquisition of Just Group, a leading provider of retirement services in the U.K. pension risk transfer and individual annuity markets, we thought it would be worthwhile to provide an update on our Wealth Solutions business and the outlook going forward.

As we speak to you today, we have a scaled global $180 billion investment-led insurance business focused on retirement and wealth solutions and a growing protection business. Our objective is to compound our capital at 15% plus returns over the long term while maintaining a disciplined approach to risk and generating stable, predictable earnings. Today, that opportunity we set out to pursue remains very large and continues to grow. Across developed markets, populations are aging, longevity is increasing and the decline of defined benefit pension systems is driving significant demand for private sector solutions that can provide stable income in retirement. These trends are not cyclical, but rather structural, and they underpin a long runway for growth in our business.

To grow our business, we have focused on originating long-duration predictable liabilities, primarily annuities and pensions and paired those with high-quality cash flowing investments sourced through the Brookfield ecosystem, allowing us to generate consistent excess returns while maintaining low leverage and a high degree of earnings visibility. Our business today is as follows: First, in North America, our annuity platform built through American National and American Equity provides us with leading distribution capabilities across the retail and institutional annuity and pension channels and the ability to originate significant volumes of long-duration predictable liabilities longer dated than what we see across the industry today. This platform continues to be a core driver of organic growth and earnings for BWS.

In parallel, we have our U.S. property and casualty platform or protection platform, as we call it, through Clearbrook. Clearbrook adds an important element of diversification for us, allowing us to participate in specialty insurance markets with a low leverage profile while also broadening our investment flexibility. Over the past few years, we have significantly improved this business by derisking the liability profile and focusing on profitable growth. We have done this through exiting volatile lines, reducing our catastrophe exposure and strengthening underwriting discipline. As the P&C market sees pockets of softening, we believe there will be substantial opportunities for us to continue to scale this platform, both organically and through M&A.

Finally, with the recent addition of Just in the U.K., we can extend our proven annuity track record into new geographies. This transaction represents a significant step forward in scaling our business internationally. The U.K. is one of the largest and most developed pension risk transfer markets globally with substantial volumes, around GBP 50 billion annually expected to come to market over the next decade. With the addition of Just, we now have immediate scale and a strong platform to build upon.

Just has operated for over 20 years, serving approximately 700,000 U.K. pensioners across institutional and retail policies, and the transaction adds approximately $40 billion of assets into BWS. We acquired this business an attractive going-in return of approximately 10% to 12% on our $1 billion of invested capital, and we closed this transaction on April 1.

From a strategic standpoint, our priorities following the close are very clear. First, we are focused on reinforcing and growing Just's core business lines, particularly in pension risk transfer and retail annuities, where the company has an established track record and a strong market position. Second, we will apply our investment-led approach to enhance returns by optimizing the asset portfolio and leveraging Brookfield's global origination capabilities. Today, the business has the ability to write approximately GBP 5 billion of pension flows annually, and we expect that to continue and grow as capital support from our balance sheet and the redeployment into Brookfield originated investments allows Just to be more competitive on large-scale transactions in the U.K. market.

Beyond the U.K., we continue to make progress on our broader international growth initiatives. In Asia, we are in the early stages of building a presence in what we believe will become a very significant market over time. We executed our first reinsurance transaction in Japan in late 2025, and we are seeing growing interest from our counterparties who believe this channel focused on long-duration, predictable liabilities will represent an important driver of growth in the years to come.

Now turning to the quarter briefly. Our business had $20 billion of regulatory capital supporting policyholders inside the insurance companies. In that regard across -- in that regard, we had a strong quarter across our distribution channels and continue to see opportunities to write longer-dated policies at our target duration to match our real asset investment strategies.

We originated approximately $5 billion of sales across long-dated retail annuities, funding-backed agreements and pensions, capturing market share in the U.S. Furthermore, we continue to expand our distribution capabilities, particularly through bank and broker-dealer channels. We recently launched our products on 2 major bank platforms with more to come this year, which we expect will contribute incremental annual sales as these platforms scale. While the first quarter is typically seasonally slower, particularly in pensions, we expect activity to increase meaningfully as the year progresses and remain constructive on the outlook for 2026, where we expect to write circa $25 billion of new policies across all of our retail and institutional annuity channels.

That being said, our approach to growth remains consistent. We remain disciplined in writing business that meets our target returns and aligns with our investment strategy. Our priority is not maximizing volume but generating high-quality, durable earnings. We have a growing number of products and distribution channels, which gives us the unique ability to allocate capital towards the most attractive opportunities across channels, products and geographies when one market becomes more competitive.

On the investment side, we continue to leverage Brookfield's global platform to source high-quality opportunities and seeing attractive risk-adjusted investments suitable for our diversified insurance portfolios. Over the last 12 months, we have deployed nearly $15 billion into Brookfield strategies, including $4 billion in the most recent quarter at an average total return exceeding 10%, reflecting the benefits of our investment franchise and our stable long-duration liability profile.

Today, our business generates more than $2 billion of annualized earnings, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver at our mid-teens targets over the long term. We are very pleased with the progress we are making. And with the recent addition of Just, continued expansion across our core markets and a disciplined investment-led approach, we believe we are well positioned to continue to scale this business while maintaining a high-quality and resilient earnings profile. Thank you.

With that, I will hand the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

So clearly, issues in private credit and software have significantly affected the public share prices of the alternative asset managers. Just curious how much fundamental damage you think has been done? And does that put us on the cusp of further industry consolidation.

Cherilyn, it's Nick. Listen, I think it's a fair question. And I think it comes back to a little bit of what Bruce talked about, which is I think there are issues that are grabbing a lot of headlines, but in the scale of the broader investment markets, their materiality is low. So for sure, it's not a systemic broad issue in any way to broader markets and valuations. And I think the degree of relevance varies based on managers and our investment strategies.

And I think that where you see price and value differentiate, they will prove out over time when people prove out their investment posture capabilities and exposure. So I think for managers that are well invested around the right sectors like us with real asset exposure, where performance is incredibly strong. I think you'll see that continue to differentiate over time and come through with the performance of the funds.

And I think for us, when you take a step back, for Brookfield, our posture was with our relevance around AI infrastructure and our presence in the space, we were able to get ahead of what was coming. It's created a tremendous investment opportunity for our real asset strategies around AI and with the Oaktree's disciplined investment strategy and capabilities, we think this could be an attractive investment opportunity for us. And maybe over time, it may create consolidation issues in the market or opportunities even for good managers. But I think this exposure will pass. There may be some that have outsized exposure to some of those sectors and there are impacts. But I think for the best managers with good investment strategies, this will go by and performance should differentiate itself over time.

But I think if you look at it as it relates to Brookfield, these are very immaterial asset classes to us based on our deliberate posture and our presence in AI is more around the backbone buildout. We have no software exposure, and our credit portfolio is performing incredibly well. So if anything, we see this as just a continuation of our strategy and our performance should differentiate itself over time.

That's good detail. The other question we've been getting is around Brookfield's posture in the Middle East and just how the war there is impacting your LPs and investment activity in that region.

Yes. I think we've reiterated this at length recently, Cherilyn. We are absolutely committed to the region. These are tremendous countries with tremendous potential and some of our best partners and the LPs. And we remain absolutely committed. We continue to have constructive conversations with them around our investment strategies and their commitment to our funds. And predating this and continuing, we also continue to have discussions with them around investment into the region. So again, we see this as a core part of our business over the long term and not impacted by the short-term volatility caused by the war.

And one moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Mario Saric with Scotiabank.

Just I wanted to circle back on the proposed BN, BNT combination. I appreciate the circular is not out yet. It sounds like the Boards are reviewing in the coming weeks. But do you have any initial sense regarding the range of potential tax implications for BN shareholders with respect to the options that you're considering?

Mario, it's Nick. I would just tell you that we are still working through the final details of the transaction. As I said, we expect Board approval shortly. But we're absolutely taking into account the tax efficiency and the impact for shareholders and are proceeding with this in a way that should minimize any impact for shareholders.

Got it. Okay. And my second one, you included a new slide in the supplemental discussing new business investments, including $1 billion of SpaceX shares. You've talked in the past in terms of BN and its kind of technology-related spend. How should we think about the progression of that investment at the BN level over time?

Yes. It's a good question, Mario. If I just take a step back, like, as you know, technology companies are increasingly moving into hard assets. And given our global presence in AI infrastructure, be it power, real estate, AI factories now through the AI fund and data centers and our broad Brookfield ecosystem, we are developing all-encompassing relationships with the major technology companies, and that is enabling us to have access to attractive investment opportunities, attractive for us and attractive for our clients.

They're also giving us access to technology potentially that can create capabilities that could benefit the broader Brookfield ecosystem. But by staying close to these technologies, they could be meaningful for our businesses over time. In terms of the size and the risk profile of what you see, we're being very disciplined. The balance sheet exposure at this point is modest relative to our permanent capital base. And we're investing selectively where we think we have differentiated access, strong partners or strategic relevance.

And to be clear, this is not SaaS exposure. It's not software exposure. It's strategic investment in technology that's highly attractive and good for the business. So I think of this as targeted allocations of capital to investments that have attractive financial returns and potential strategic value to the franchise. And just given the strong performance to date and hence, the growth in size, we felt now was just a good time to call it out and profile the investments that we have so that they are visible for you to see and understand.

One moment for our next question and that will come from the line of Bart Dziarski with RBC Capital Markets.

I wanted to ask with regards to Brookfield Wealth Solutions. So we're seeing the regulatory environment evolving, including recently the U.K. PRA looking at funded reinsurance agreements with Bermuda captive. So maybe if you guys could talk us through how you're managing regulatory capital as the environment evolves.

Sure. Bart, it's Sachin. First of all, just to level set, we have $20 billion -- in excess of $20 billion of regulatory capital that's inside the insurance business. And every one of our insurance companies that write policies is rated A or A- by the 3 major agencies, and 2 of our entities have received upgrades over the last few years. So we're in a great position from a capital position.

We generally operate about 4x the regulatory minimum requirement of capital. And that's allowed us to write policies in the U.S. in scale because we're seen as a trusted reliable partner. On top of that, as you know, we have $180 billion of permanent capital sitting in BN, which has supported our growth and which acts as an incredible, if not often talked about, layer of additional protection for our business. So we're in great shape, and we have a runway for years to come to be able to use that capital and grow the franchise.

On your point on the U.K. pushing back on Bermuda as a jurisdiction, I don't think it has a material impact to us. Just doesn't use it today, and we were not planning to use it for Just. And I would say the real answer there is the U.K. and even in Europe, migrating insurance liabilities and assets to the U.K. doesn't really provide much of a capital benefit in light of Bermuda adopting rules that were consistent with the U.K. and Europe. And so for the PRA to say, we don't want you to use it, it shouldn't have a dramatic impact on even our competitors in that marketplace, but certainly not for us because we don't use it today.

Okay. Great. Very helpful. And then maybe just sticking with insurance and on the Just Group. So you talked about it can write $5 billion of business annually today, but you're looking to scale that. Could you unpack that opportunity a little bit. I think there's a chance to move up market and maybe other areas you're looking for to tap into that growth.

Sure. So what -- Just was very -- and is very, very good at is operating in small pension schemes that are not highly competitive because of their size and generating really attractive returns on those. And they built a franchise in and around small schemes. And we intend to continue that because it's an area where there's just not a lot of competition and you can pick up great returns.

But with our capability to bring capital and investment expertise to their business, we think they can now move to the upper end of the market and write policies that are in excess of $500 million or in excess of $1 billion, where, again, there's less competition on both ends of the extreme spectrum. So in the very small policies and the very large policies, there just is less competition. And if we can play in both of those spots, we can pick up attractive returns. And in playing on the larger policies, we can bring a lot of the expertise we have from the U.S. and Canada into that market.

One moment for our next question and that will come from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

This is Michael on for Alex. I wanted to ask a quick question on the P&C business. So you've mentioned that you continue to exit parts of that business. We were wondering what the run rate DE impact is after you fully rationalize those parts of the P&C business. How far along are you towards those goals? And then as a corollary, what are the capital implications of exiting those lines?

Sure. Michael, so I would say we have completed the "exiting of lines." We exited surety, our professional lines business, we exited last year. We culled a few other lines, but we're done. There's no more exiting to be done. The business we have is in really good shape. And where we are today is, I'd say, we have a very strong casualty franchise. We really are careful on the property side because of where we saw cat exposure. And we have a small and very stable admitted business.

If I was to look ahead over the next 5 years, I think what we're seeing is as the property markets continue to soften and rate comes down and as casualty markets are starting to show the first signs of that, we think our specialty business should be poised to grow for 2 reasons. One is we could be a very reliable counterparty to the broker-led market because we are in good shape. We have strong capital, and we are -- we have a track record now of profitability. And then two, we think there'll be platforms out there that will need capital in this environment, and we could be a great partner for them. So I don't see any further reduction in the business. In fact, where I see it now over the next 5 years is potential -- we have the potential to substantially grow this business as markets were to deteriorate.

Great. As a follow-up on the full year $25 billion target for origination. Obviously, there's some seasonality in the retail channel for the first quarter. But accounting for the $4 billion year-to-date, I think that implies something like $7 billion per quarter for the rest of the year. So maybe we can kind of walk through the sources there. It sounds like about $5 billion of that is expected from Just. But anything on the sources of the $25 billion cadence over the year and the confidence in hitting that target?

Sure. I'll start with -- one thing we did see in the first quarter, and this is pretty broadly published or disseminated is that demand for fixed annuities is down 9% or 10% in the U.S. this year over last year. So we are seeing, for the first time, a slight softening of annuity demand. In that environment, we actually picked up market share. We picked up 4 points of market share in a weaker market, which is a really good fact pattern. It shows that we're able to sell in this market, pick up as others sort of fall away.

And what we're seeing now is the early signs of us entering into the bank channel market. Just so you have sort of a perspective on the importance of the bank channels. Today, we sell about 1/3 of total annuities in the U.S. on the bank channel. Most of our competitors sell about 2/3 of total annuities through the bank channel. So we have a tremendous runway of growth as those channels ramp up.

We got on to 2 important bank channels in the first quarter this year, and we have a third one coming likely in the third quarter of this year. So we have a lot of runway for growth. We think we'll pick up market share. And if you take that increased market share in the U.S. plus the combination of Just, we feel pretty good if all things stay consistent where they are, that will be in line with our targets.

One moment for our next question and that will come from the line of Sohrab Movahedi with BMO Capital Markets.

Sachin, I wanted to just stay with you, if I can. What are the 2 or 3 KPIs you want BN shareholders to watch for to see how best you are capturing at BWS compounding intrinsic value for BN?

I would say total return on invested capital is number one. That's our singular focus. We're building this business to compound capital at mid-teens or high teens for a very long period without taking undue risk. So if I had to focus you on one thing, I would say that we're not a top line business. This isn't about growth at all costs. It's nice that we grow and we see a long runway of growth, and we don't think that, that's going away. But really compounding capital is very important.

To unpack that, we then look at total return over our cost of funds, which is more of a per unit measure. So what is -- I know in the market, sometimes analysts and others look at spread, but we add on top of spread unrealized gain on investments. And so we really look at total return on our invested capital, and we look at it both on a gross business basis and on a per unit basis.

Beyond that, what I would say is we're trying to build, and we are maybe the only ones who can do this is we're trying to build a business where at the top of the house, we can move our capital around to geographies and products, and we can do that without any conflicts or clients or other invested capital partners sitting in any parts of the business. So if the U.K. is a great opportunity, we can move capital there. If the U.S. presents a more compelling opportunity, we can go there. And we can be fungible in how we allocate capital with that singular goal that I described at the outset. Does that help?

Yes, that's very helpful. And so maybe just as a bit of a follow-on to that. Maybe it's a bit of a naive question to ask Brookfield, but is there a size at which or is there a scale or market position at which you would say we can put a mission accomplished kind of sign on BWS.

No. I think as long as you see a credible path to allocate capital in a business where you can continue to compound at mid-teens, you don't really put up a mission accomplished sign. For us, it's just comes down to does the next dollar of capital offer a compelling investment opportunity. And the answer...

One moment for our next question and that will come from the line of Jaeme Gloyn with National Bank.

I'll stay with the star of the show today Sachin and a question on retail flows, annuity flows, so I think you kind of addressed it a little bit a couple of questions to go, but I wanted to focus it on the outflow side of the equation, which increased materially from this quarter last year. Can you talk about the drivers of those outflows? Is there some lumpiness? Is it consistent? Maybe just help on that front.

Yes. Part of it is just quarter-over-quarter comparisons are difficult. I would say on an annualized basis, we should be at somewhere between $10 billion to $12 billion of outflows, which is consistent with our duration profile that's sort of high single digit. For the most part, we are selling products in the 5-, 7- and 10-year range. And so if you blend out on an average liability duration of 8 to 9 years, and you divide that by the total assets we have, you can very quickly come down to what our annualized outflows should be. So not a surprise. And I would say if you're -- for modeling purposes, if you're trying to plan, you should plan $10 billion to $12 billion a year as the business gets larger, naturally, you're going to have more outflows year-over-year.

Yes. Okay. Understood. And then stepping up higher level on the breakdown of distributable earnings, and just looking at cost of funds growing at a faster rate than the net investment income in this quarter, anything to pull out from that result?

Yes. So one thing that I think is cutting across us and all of our peers is that as the front end of the yield curve comes down and annuity rates continue to stay pegged to the back end of the curve, you're bringing in dollars on day 1 in cash that just earn less money. And I think what you have to then be able to look at -- so that -- therefore, your weighted average net investment yield is lower on day 1 than it would have been a year ago when the yield curve was higher and yet your cost of funds is the same and has crept up a little bit as the back end has come up.

With that steepening of the yield curve, I think what you guys have to look at is who's best positioned to capture that total return. And what we are really focused on is rotating that cash position into long-duration assets, long-duration equity and credit strategies where we can earn that high teens total return on a per unit basis. And if you look at our results, we're -- as I said, we're capturing market share. Our total return is still somewhere in the 225 basis points of spread and we're still achieving mid-teens ROEs. So I'm not worried. But if you look at a point in time, that's what's driving your lower average net investment yield vis-a-vis your cost of funds.

One moment for our next question and that will come from the line of Dean Wilkinson with CIBC.

Nick, I just want to talk on the buybacks. I mean, it's been a tremendous use of capital over the past 5 years. But when you look at that relative to the value that say, sits at the manager, has there been any thought as the gap closes at that ownership level kind of saying, would you take that back to the historical 75% or are you just trying to match those buybacks with what the manager is doing?

Hi, Dean, yes, listen, thanks for the question. Listen, I would think of BN and BAM as 2 distinct companies with their own capital. And they -- and we're doing our own buybacks based on our own -- independently almost of each other. At the BN level, as you know, we have significant cash flow coming in every year. We have very attractive investment opportunities, and we look to opportunistically buy back shares where we see that discount persists between price and our view of intrinsic value.

And as we've executed this year is about $475 million, $470 million year-to-date, that's a good pace, and we're not even halfway through the year. And so for us, this is just a permanent consideration of allocation of capital. And it's a separate and distinct allocation to what the BAM management team is focused on.

They independently of BN believe that -- and maybe it comes back to the first question that Cherilyn asked the volatility that's been created in the market by some of the negative perception around credit and software, which really was applied to every manager without distinguishing who had exposure and who didn't caused some irrational behavior in the BAM share price, and they opportunistically bought back shares in size in that period of time. That was an independent capital allocation decision. But given our significant ownership in BAM, we benefit significantly from that. But I would say they're distinct from each other, but you should expect buybacks to continue to be a significant component of our capital allocation at BN.

Back at BN. Okay. I mean it's very reminiscent of kind of everyone thought real estate was going to die a couple of years ago and well, it didn't really.

I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ms. Katie Battaglia for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And with that, we'll end the call.

This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation; and Sachin Shah, Chief Executive Officer of our Wealth Solutions business. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the year. And finally, Sach will provide an update on our Wealth Solutions business.

After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we request that you refrain from asking more than 2 questions.

I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements. including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws.

These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and how their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website.

In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisitions of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Katie, and welcome to everyone on the call. 2025 was a very active year for the business. We advanced a number of strategic initiatives and delivered strong financial results. Our cash flows are now supported by our large-scale capital base, which totals $180 billion and the diversification of our platform across asset classes, geographies and capital sources, all of which provide multiple avenues for growth and position our business to remain resilient and grow across economic cycles.

In the last 12 months, we raised $112 billion of capital, financed nearly $175 billion of assets, completed $91 billion of asset sales. and deployed $126 billion of capital while growing our insurance asset base to $145 billion. That all allowed us to deliver record financial results with distributable earnings [indiscernible] realizations of $5.4 billion and total distributable earnings of $6 billion. Nick will cover financial results in more detail, and Sachin will spend some time discussing our wealth solutions business shortly.

Before they speak, I will add a few things. Looking back to 2025 in the stock market, our stock generated a 21% return for shareholders. That increased our 30-year track record to an annual compound return of 19%. That's $1 million with us over that period would be worth $285 million today. Of course, that's the miracle of compounding good results.

Turning briefly to the market environment. business fundamentals are strong. Capital markets have improved. Liquidity has returned both in debt and equity markets, interest rates have started to come down globally and transaction activity has picked up. In this environment, real assets should continue to outperform, offering investors the opportunity to earn excellent returns while taking moderate risk.

As our platform has grown, so has the scale of the work we do with our partners. Increasingly, we are partnering with the highest quality organizations on large-scale, sophisticated projects that are critical to both national and corporate priorities. Recently, that has included partnerships with NVIDIA, Microsoft, JPMorgan, the United States French Swedish and Qatar governments among others. Our ability to work with counterparties of this caliber underscores the strength, resilience and global reach of our platform. It also reflects a deliberate long-term approach to building our business with great partners.

We believe long-term business success requires many things, but 3 in particular stand out together. They make the difference between good and great long-term returns. First, it starts with identifying businesses that can endure and evolve. For decades, we focus on building the backbone of the global economy. And while that focus has remained consistent, long-term success requires evolving as the economy itself evolves.

Second, when a business is well positioned and well run, compounding becomes the dominant driver of value creation. Over long periods of time, small differences in annual returns can lead to very large differences in outcomes. And third, and maybe most important, avoiding disruption to the compounding process and business success is critical. Compounding works best when capital is allowed to be remain invested for long periods of time.

For us, that means that we must always keep excess capital to ensure that we can ride through any market cycle. And our balance sheet strength as Nick will later gives us flexibility to do just that. It allows us to stay focused on long-term value creation, allocate capital selectively and take advantage of dislocations when others are more constrained.

Real estate illustrates this well. Over the past 40 years, we have invested in operated and monetized real estate across many market cycles. Our approach has always been ground in fundamentals. We acquire assets for value, finance them conservatively and manage them actively. In the most recent cycle, dislocation was driven largely by capital markets and shifting sentiment rather than a deterioration in underlying fundamentals.

While many step back, we remain active, continuing to invest, develop and reposition assets. And today, this sentiment is beginning to realign with fundamentals. New supply across core markets is very muted, demand is growing and asset values are set to rise substantially. We enter this next phase from a position of strength, owning the highest quality real estate in supplies constrained markets, operating it through our leading platforms.

And as we have seen across cycles, great real estate owned and managed well, always wins over time. That same long-term mindset applies to our other businesses, including how we think about our structure in the public markets. Over the last 15 years, as many of you know, we've offered listed versions of our investment strategies through what we refer to as our listed partnerships. To broaden accessibility for global investors need to later paired with sister corporate entities.

And when we created our insurance business 5 years ago, we followed the same approach, establishing it as a listed sister company to Brookfield Corporation, trading under the symbol [ BNT ]. These structures have served our business extremely well. But as markets evolve and with the continued expansion of index investing, splitting market capitalizations has become sub-optimal, as a result, we're now focused on streamlining and consolidating our market capitalizations.

As an initial step last year, we announced the combination of Brookfield Business Partners with its sister company, Brookfield Business Corporation. This transaction creates a single listed entity that is index eligible for the entire market capitalization and it now reflects the full scale of the business in one company. Building on that momentum, this year, we intend to work on merging Brookfield Corporation with its paired sister insurance entity, [ BNT ]. This will streamline our structure and enable the next evolution of Brookfield, bringing together our insurance and our balance sheet investment activities into one entity.

This will also add substantial capital to our insurance operations, supporting growth in that business that is underpinned by our real asset-focused investment strategy while our excess capital will enable us to operate at industry low operating leverage.

In closing, we have strong momentum across all of our businesses, significant access to capital and a long runway of growth. We're well positioned and confident in our ability to continue to deliver financial results and compound value for shareholders. 2026 should be another strong year. Thank you all for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. I will now turn it over to Nick.

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. We delivered record financial results in 2025, supported by strong momentum across each of our core businesses. Distributable earnings or DE, before realizations for the year were $5.4 billion or $2.27 per share, representing an 11% increase over the prior year. Total DE, including realizations was $6 billion or $2.54 per share and total net income was $3.2 billion for the year.

Our Asset Management business delivered record results in 2025, generating $2.8 billion of distributable earnings or $1.17 per share. We raised $112 billion of capital during the year across a diversified set of strategies, reflecting continued investor demand for our fund offerings. Fee-bearing capital increased by 12% to over $600 billion and drove a 22% increase in fee-related earnings to $3 billion.

Looking ahead, with strong fundraising visibility, including the launch of our latest flagship private equity fund and our inaugural AI infrastructure fund, and with the announced acquisition of Oaktree, our asset management business is well positioned to deliver another year of meaningful earnings growth.

Our Wealth Solutions business delivered strong results in 2025, generating $1.7 billion of distributable earnings or $0.71 per share, representing a 24% increase over the prior year. Our results were driven by continued growth in our insurance platform with $20 billion of annuity sales during the year, alongside improved profitability in our P&C business. On the investment side, we deployed $13 billion into Brookfield managed strategies, supporting a sustained 15% return on our equity, while generating a 2.25% growth spread and Sachin will expand on this in more detail in his remarks.

Our operating businesses continued to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $1.6 million or $0.68 per share for the year. This performance was supported by strong underlying fundamentals across the platform. Operating funds from operations in our renewable power and transition and infrastructure businesses increased by 14% over the prior year, and our private equity business continues to contribute recurring high-quality cash flows.

Within our real estate business, we have seen sentiment realign with the strong underlying fundamentals that have been in place for some time now. The environment today reflects several years of limited new supply across major global markets, while tenant demand has continued to grow, translating into strong leasing activity and meaningful rent growth for high-quality assets.

During the year, we signed nearly 17 million square feet of office leases globally with net rents averaging 18% higher than expiring leases across our super core and core+ portfolios. Few portfolio highlights include: in New York, we signed 2.4 million square feet of leases at rents 20% higher than those expiring. In Canada, leasing activity picked up meaningfully over the year. We signed 2.4 million square feet of leases at rents 10% higher than expiring levels. And in London, we signed nearly 800,000 square feet of leases at rents close to 10% higher than those expiring.

This lease activity reflects strong demand from large creditworthy tenants such as Moody's and Visa who are relocating their regional headquarters to our properties, alongside many -- of many of our other high-quality tenants that executed long-term renewals and expansions. At the same time, properties that we delivered or substantially repositioned over the past few years, including office assets in major global markets are now nearly fully leased and achieving some of the highest rents on record.

As a result, our portfolio finished the year in a very strong position with our Super Core and Core+ portfolios more than 95% occupied and poised to continue delivering robust NOI growth in 2026.

Turning to monetizations. 2025 was a record year, advancing $91 billion of asset sales across the business at attractive returns, including $24 billion in real estate, $22 billion in infrastructure $12 billion in renewable power and $33 billion from private equity and other investments. Substantially, all sales were completed at or above carrying values, realizing meaningful value for our clients.

During the year, we realized $560 million of carried interest into income and ended the year with $11.6 billion of accumulated unrealized carried interest. And with a strong pipeline of planned asset sales across the business, we expect carried interest realized into income to accelerate over time.

Moving on to capital allocation. In addition to investing excess cash flow back into the business, we also returned $1.6 billion to shareholders in 2025 through regular dividends and share buybacks. We repurchased more than $1 billion of Class A shares in the open market at an average price of $36, which represents nearly a 50% discount to our view of intrinsic value including approximately $150 million repurchased since last quarter.

We also maintained strong access to capital markets during the year and executed approximately $175 billion of financings across the franchise including $53 billion in infrastructure, $42 billion in real estate, $37 billion in renewable power and more than $40 billion in private equity and other businesses.

At the corporation, we issued CAD 1 billion of 7- and 30-year notes at favorable spreads in December and subsequent to year-end, our real estate business completed an $800 million fixed rate financing at a supercore office property in Manhattan at very attractive spreads further underscoring lender appetite for high-quality assets.

Lastly, we ended the year with a conservatively capitalized balance sheet, strong liquidity and record deployable capital of $188 billion. Taken all together, the strategic initiatives we advanced in 2025 fueled meaningful momentum with a $180 billion permanent capital base, strong liquidity and multiple avenues for growth, we are well positioned to continue compounding shareholder value in 2026 and over the long term.

With that, I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a 17% increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.07 per share payable at the end of March to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 17, 2026. Thank you for your time. And with that, I will now pass the call over to Sachin.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to join the call this quarter to provide an update on Brookfield Wealth Solutions. 2025 was a strong year. We finished with over $140 billion of insurance assets, generated $1.7 billion of distributable earnings and delivered a return on equity above our mid-teens target.

As we look ahead to 2026, we are very well positioned to deliver continued growth across both our retirement and protection businesses. As always, our ability to invest into the broader Brookfield investment platforms continues to be a key advantage for us. Access to long duration, real asset equity and credit strategies that provide stable recurring cash flow growth and attractive returns provides a differentiated foundation for driving the business forward.

On our current trajectory, we expect to end 2026 with circa $200 billion of insurance assets, over $2 billion of distributable earnings to Brookfield and a capital base exceeding $20 billion, well above our regulatory targets. Importantly, this growth is supported by a highly diversified business across multiple scale geographies, high-demand retirement products and a growing protection franchise which together provide multiple avenues to source long-duration, low-cost liabilities.

We have a number of important priorities in 2026, and I will highlight a few of them now. which we believe will drive stable, reliable earnings growth over the next decade and should lead to continued growth in the value of our business. First, we are focused on closing, integrating and scaling our U.K. acquisition. Over $50 billion of pensions are expected to come to the U.K. risk transfer market in 2026 and over [ GBP ] 500 billion of pensions will come to the market over the next decade. This represents a large and growing opportunity set. We have made substantial investments in the pension markets acquiring platforms for value while building out operational capabilities required to scale.

Our recently announced acquisition of the [ just Group ] in the U.K. is expected to close in the first half of 2026 and we are already advancing plans to grow that business and execute on over [ GBP ] 5 billion of pension opportunities annually.

At the same time, we are working to grow our footprint in Asia where savings products continue to be in high demand as populations age and retirement income is highly desirable. Japan's life and savings insurance market is one of the largest globally with approximately $3 trillion of assets on insurer balance sheets today, reflecting the depth of long-term savings and retirement liabilities that create significant opportunities for retirement income and growth-oriented solutions in the region.

More broadly, across Asia Pacific, demographic shifts are driving a rapid increase in financial assets with life and pension savings representing an increasing share of household wealth. We are in the early stages of building our business in Japan and broader Asia, having completed our first transaction in Japan at the end of 2025.

We have a strong pipeline of opportunities ahead of us, which should translate into $3 billion to $5 billion of annual flows over time. In the U.S., we are expanding our retirement distribution capabilities to drive in excess of $30 billion of inflows into the business annually over time.

U.S. fixed annuity demand exceeded $300 billion in 2025 as aging populations continue to look for stable retirement income. A significant portion of that demand flows through large bank and broker-dealer channels, which have been a key area of focus for us. On average, these channels account for 2/3 of U.S. retail annuity sales, whereas they have only represented about 1/3 of our sales historically.

Given the sustained demand through these channels, we have been investing into these relationships. We've expanded our offerings on one such platform already this year are on track to launch a second before the end of this month and expect to launch 2 additional platforms within the calendar year. Given our expansion, our annualized organic inflow should comfortably grow to over $25 billion in the near term.

As it relates to our protection franchise, we are prioritizing and identifying opportunities for scale as markets soften through selective M&A, organic growth and expansion of our reinsurance capabilities. Our protection business delivered $8 billion of float to manage in 2025 at virtually no cost of funding. We have made tremendous progress to date focusing the business on reducing risk, exiting low profitability lines of business, and positioning for softer markets ahead, which we believe will lead to more compelling growth opportunities over time.

Lastly, we are continuing our pivot towards equity-oriented strategies to enhance investment returns using our strong capital base to deliver higher quality earnings with lower operating leverage. In 2025, we deployed $13 billion into Brookfield originated strategies and average net yield 8.5%. We also made additional commitments to Brookfield-sponsored private funds, which will be further accretive to our earnings as those funds call and deploy capital over the medium term.

To bring this together, the strategic initiatives we have executed to date, together with our priorities outlined for 2026, position the business for continued earnings growth. We have a platform that benefits from diversification across distribution channels geographies and product types, allowing us to access the most competitive risk-adjusted cost of capital.

With a strong pipeline of real asset investments across Brookfield's various strategies, we feel confident in our ability to continue compounding our capital at well above our mid-teens targets. Thank you for your time. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question will come from the line of Kenneth Worthington with JPMorgan.

You've spoken in the past about scaling the P&C business. And today, you called out the protection business and the improved profitability a number of times in the prepared remarks. So I was hoping you could flesh out your comments and talk about where the business stands today, maybe a bit more on how you plan on scaling it from here? And then lastly, what's the right relative size of the P&C business to the life and annuity business for you?

Sure. It's Sachin here. So you're right. We've talked a lot about our PMC or protection business, as we call it, I would say the last few years, and you would know this just from the general market backdrop has been a very hard market. You've seen record profits in established P&C platforms. And during that period to acquire businesses for value was very difficult.

Owners would expect significant multiples on book capital and not everyone had a great platform or has a great platform, yet valuation expectations were tremendously high. Our approach during that period was to acquire platforms where we felt we could acquire them at a significant discount to book, work on repositioning them and really orient them to the next cycle that will come, softer markets and ensure that we have a good risk culture, a good cycle management culture and that we could grow them organically even if markets start to soften, which we're seeing pretty significantly right now, in particular on the property side.

Where that leaves us is we now have a business that is generating strong profits. We've been able to reposition our investment portfolios much more to equity-oriented strategies we are breakeven on underwriting profit and we'll be generating underwriting profits going forward. And we now have a platform that as markets soften, we think that we can pursue M&A. There will be some platforms who struggle in this environment.

We think we can build out reinsurance capabilities. and we can continue to diversify our lines. So I think from the outlook perspective, the business has a very strong outlook ahead. In terms of size, we have about $3 billion of capital that supports our protection business, $8 billion of float. And I think we could comfortably see a path to $20 billion to $25 billion of flow by the end of the decade. I'll pause there.

And that will come from the line of Bart Dziarski with RBC Capital Markets.

Wanted to ask around the decision to simplify the structure and collapse P&T. So I know you called out a few reasons in the letter, but can you maybe unpack the decisioning there why now and the expected time frame?

Bart, it's Nick. I think in the letter and in Bruce's comments, we provided a lot of the background. What I'd add to that is -- we have seen an evolution in public markets. And as our business has evolved, we do believe at this point in time, it makes sense to streamline and simplify and we've seen the benefits of that play out for [ BBU].

And as we think about -- when we set up BN originally -- sorry, BWS, when we started investing in insurance, we did so thinking it was a very attractive stand-alone investment opportunity. And to stand it up on its own 2 feet, we set up a paired security [ BT ] that added value and provided optionality as we continue to scale the business.

I think, as you know, as we've discussed, we see things quite differently now. The insurance business has scaled meaningfully. There's great growth potential ahead for that business. And as it's grown, we've realized the tremendous synergies that it has with overall Brookfield and therefore, it has increasingly become more integrated with the corporation. And today, the business fully benefits from the investment ecosystem of BAM, offering ideal investment solutions to back the liabilities that we have.

But we think the next step is to also allow the business to fully benefit from the capital base of the broader Brookfield the full $180 billion of capital that we have to back its growth while allowing it to maintain low operating leverage. So what that means for the business is that we're working on a plan to combine BN and BNT into a single-listed company, one security.

We would see no change to the governance, the management team, the investment processes, the risk framework within the business, but the end result would be a streamlined structure that provides investors with simpler access to our business, will sustain and ultimately enhance the long-term growth profile of the business. So we will continue to work on that. And as we said in the letter, we'd like to think we can execute it within the next 12 month.

Great. Very helpful. And then just sticking with, I guess, Brookfield Wealth Solutions. Very strong ROE. It looks like it's north of 15%. I think we get it on the asset side as to how the strategy is differentiated. Is there anything on the liability side that's also contributing to that? And what's the outlook there in terms of preserving that ROE in this year?

Bart, it's Sachin. Yes, on the liability side, we've really been focused on diversification of product type. That started with simple annuities and a small P&C business. It's really morphed into geographic expansion, a multitude of retirement products that we sell through all of our businesses, getting into the pension markets and scaling there and broadening out our P&C business.

What that really means in practice is at the top of the house, we can look at where our capital is allocated, and we can allocate it to where the cost of funding is the lowest. And therefore, we can move our capital around by geography, by product type and ensure that as competition increases in one area, we move away to an area where we see better value. We couple that with our investment franchise at Brookfield and that leads to really robust spread and really robust total returns for the business.

That will come from the line of Alexander Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just maybe another one around PC definitely seems like you guys have been hinting to that for a couple of quarters now, but it definitely feels like you're leaning into that more aggressively, both organically and perhaps inorganically.

How are you thinking about the risk that brings to the BN platform as a whole, obviously, quite different than the annuities business. And when we think about the opportunity that, that creates for [ BAM ] as far as incremental assets that could be managed or fall under the [ IMA], what would be the implications for the management fee business?

I'll start with, just the balance sheet of the P&C business. As you know, it's a lower leverage business. So I think it requires capital to grow, but you don't get the same operating leverage as you do an annuity business. And for that reason, you don't get the same projected assets going over to BAM.

That being said, our annuity business is very large. It's global. And we really have focused the last 5 years on scaling that. So we have a regular flow of capital coming into the group. On the P&C side, the real benefit for us is there will be times where that business, we see opportunities to drive our funding cost down because we can move into parts of the protection market that don't have as much competition.

And remember, the annuity market today is very competitive. All of our peers are in that space. Many small asset managers have gone into it and all the incumbent insurers are very aggressively growing their retirement business as well. So it was prudent for us to build other levers to drive funding costs down and to be able to allocate capital in parts of the business that have less competition.

Got it. All right. That's helpful. Okay. Second question for you guys, maybe pivot to real estate. The fundamentals in the business look like continue to improve. If we look at NOI, FFO, any of the metrics you guys put out, looks like it's been a nice improvement over the last couple of quarters now, but help us maybe unpack what's been driving that?

And within that, I believe there's quite a bit of floating rate debt that still benefits the cash flows of your real estate franchise. Maybe help with some sensitivity around kind of, I don't know, 25 basis point cut in rates, how much does that impact the cash flows across the entire [ BPG ] real estate.

Alex, listen, I think we've talked at length about the fundamentals and the market dynamics going on in global real estate right now, and they are continuing to build momentum. And I'd say that's across the highest quality office and retail. If you look at the office markets in global gateway cities, there is very low to no new supply coming on market.

New supply is not expected for -- in large scale anytime soon, and yet tenant demand continues to grow. And we've seen that inflection point in that business in the last couple of years, this year, accelerating still going on with a number of tenants. We're actively engaged with through a very large requirements for high-quality space. We signed -- 2 of the largest leases in downtown last year, I think, is the largest ever move of a tenant in the downtown core are definitely for some time into a trophy building and we can see that momentum continue.

Look in London, one of the tightest markets globally now setting record rents with each lease we signed in the city, tenant demand in Canadian Wharf, the strongest we've seen -- so those are the underlying drivers for the growth in the NOI in office. Now as we move those tenants in and we vacate space, it takes time to come through the numbers, but the underlying momentum and the valuation appreciation is coming through the numbers and in retail -- the sales continue to be very strong.

We have a very strong seasonal performance in our assets this year, strong total year and again, expect sales growth this year with strong tenant growth. And all of these assets continue to sign leases at very strong positive spreads to the leases that are expiring. So that's driving the NOI growth, and we see that trend continuing. The capital markets are incredibly supportive of these assets. We just completed a financing in downtown New York last week and the debt stack was 10x oversubscribed up and down the stack.

So the capital markets are incredibly constructive. We continue to drive in spreads. So that's driving the NOI performance. On the FFO, you're right. We have some floating rate debt. We're probably right now about 75% to 80% fixed rate. But that floating rate movement, 25 basis points, it's probably roughly about $35 million to FFO on an annualized basis. But I'd say there's more going on than just rates coming down. We have the benefit of tightening spreads, and we have the benefit of some delevering come through the P&L. So I think the FFO trajectory continues to look positive from this point forward.

And that will come from the line of Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to ask about heard the helpful commentary around some of the initiatives globally. I was hoping maybe we could double click on Asia. And if you could maybe elaborate a bit on some of the steps you're taking to grow your footprint in Asia, what we can expect from Brookfield here in '26 and over the next couple of years?

I think you mentioned a pipeline. Can you just elaborate on that pipeline, what that looks like? And then in Europe, as we move past the just deal, and we look out to later this year into '27, can you speak to some of the stuff that you're going to be taking to capture the opportunity set in Europe?

Sure. It's Sachin here. So first on Japan, I would say our pipeline -- we've been pretty active for the last 3 years in the Japanese market with teams on the ground focused on relationship building, leveraging the broader Brookfield brand. And as you know, there has been a pretty steady history of Japanese insurers undertaking reinsurance with foreign counterparties. And we've been able to build trust. We've been able to get onto the list of acceptable counterparties. We completed our first deal as we've announced last year with [indiscernible] [ Frontier Life].

I would say we now have strong relationships with half a dozen of the top insurers in Japan all of whom are advancing discussions with us about entering into partnership deals on both flow and in-force reinsurance. Not all of them will hit, but we expect a number of them will. And we feel pretty good that we will have just a recurring steady flow of reinsurance relationships in the country.

Beyond Japan, we're actively looking at markets like Korea and Hong Kong, Taiwan, where you have a similar savings dynamic that's occurring and aging populations that really aren't earning a proper yield in their savings products and look to insurance products to supplement returns for themselves. And I would say we're actively conducting outreach in those markets as well looking to build on our pipeline. Europe, I would say, is a bit more of a challenge. We've spent a lot of time in Europe.

On the annuity side and on the protection side. But I would say on the annuity side, the market there is much more regulated around what's called the with-profits business. And what it effectively means is your ability to generate spread is very limited by regulatory constructs. So I think if we're going to advance our business in Europe, we're going to do it very slowly, very carefully and make sure that we don't end up in a situation where -- the things that were good at Brookfield investing into real assets are not able to be done, that would be problematic for us.

Great. And then just a follow-up question, if I could, on carry. I was hoping you might be able to help how are you characterizing the outlook here for carry into '26 relative to '27?

Thanks, Mike. So I think we had a good performance in 2025, probably slightly ahead of plan for the year. And I know we've talked in the past about seeing an inflection point coming this year. The pipeline for monetizations continues to be very strong as we look out this year. And I'd say it's active in the right areas as it relates to carry. It's active specifically in the funds that are relevant for realizations across infra, real estate and within Oaktree.

So I think we feel -- we feel good about where we are today. Obviously, we feel very good about the valuation of the assets we're bringing to market. Timing is slightly outside of our control. But if we had to estimate, we think we'd see it start to step up in the second half of the year and then continue to scale into '27 and '28, as we've talked about before. So the valuations are good. The processes are going. The pipeline is strong, and it just depends on timing now.

And that will come from the line of Mario Saric with Scotiabank.

Just wanted to talk about the dividend increase was the largest and some time kind of double 5, 10-year CAGRs, the largest month of the booked publicly traded companies this year. I'm pretty sure it's not a result of lack of investment opportunities as we're hearing on the call. So I'm curious whether the increase is kind of a shift in dividend growth policy that better mirrors expected underlying cash flow per share growth going forward?

Yes. Mario, it's Nick. No, I think it's more simple than that. We obviously split the shares. And at BN, we haven't done sort of fractions of a penny increases. So we stuck with a penny. The payout ratio is still very low, as you know, -- so whilst it looks like a high increase on paper and it is a nice increase, the payout ratio is still very low and it's not a change in strategy.

We still are focused on reinvesting capital back into the business. And when we return capital to shareholders, we look to do it opportunistically through buying back shares. So I don't think it's a significant change in strategy. It's more a product of the fact that we split the shares this year last year.

Okay. Makes sense. And my second question, in the letter to shareholders, you talked about identifying fees that enable investment growth. You've talked a lot about digitalization, decarbonization and equalization have maintained over the past decade, associated with your commentary about the need of an organization to evolve over time, if you have to guess, what are some themes that you may be discussing at your Investor Day 5 years from now that may or may not be ticked on what you're talking about today.

Listen, I think the themes that we have today have a long runway ahead of them. We are in the very early stages of the build-out of supporting the growth of AI and this revolution. And I think the themes will still be anchored by the same fundamental principles.

They're anchored today by the same principles we were talking about 10 and 15 years ago. So it's very hard to predict exactly what we'll be talking about 5 years from now. But I think it will be anchored on the same core fundamentals, but we do expect a very long runway from the current themes that are driving the growth of the business.

And that will come from the line of Jaeme Gloyn with National Bank.

Just a quick question on the North American residential portfolio. Just looking at the operating FFO this quarter, stepping up from Q3. Was there any increase in activity on sales this quarter versus the prior quarter? Or is that just more reflecting some of the seasonality in the business? And then kind of maybe talk through some of the outlook around that portfolio into 2026?

Yes. It's very much due to seasonality. The best way to analyze the performance of that business would be comparing the quarter performance for the prior year quarter as opposed to the prior quarter. There tends to be seasonality and strong performance in Q4. And when you look at it compared to Q4 of last year, we did have a onetime gain on a sale of a large lot.

So there is an outsized gain in last year's numbers. I think that the trend in that business continues to be what we've talked about for a while. It's a very well-performing business for us, very well run, generates good cash flow. But for sure, we are seeing muted activity in the housing markets in Canada and the U.S. for now.

We expect that over time, the performance will improve as we see a shortage in housing, and we are very well placed with a very nimble platform and if you think back to Q1, we did derisk that investment by pulling out $1 billion of capital by exiting a few of our master planned communities, and we've positioned that more as an asset-light business now -- we continue to scale the land servicing and land management businesses for our clients, generating fees for Brookfield Asset Management. But I think as we look forward, we do see sort of muted performance at the start of this year, but very well positioned to benefit when the market improves.

And then following in the same theme around the real estate assets, if I kind of go back to a couple of Investor Days, the view would be that real estate assets would sort of decline through the 2029, 2030 period. But we've kind of seen that tick up over the last several quarters.

So I guess, is that a reflection of just paying out of the assets for now until better monetization opportunities present themselves? And do you see that sort of accelerating in the early part of the year, second part of the year? Or is it maybe more of a '27 story when you see that start to unfold and see the capital levels start to drift lower?

Yes. Listen, I know I'm going to say that we've necessarily been aggressively acquiring as [indiscernible] and stepping up from acquisition, but we have obviously, been holding on to the assets. We've been focused on operational improvement and performance. And we've seen that. And as I said, the operating fundamentals have been strong for a while now, and that growth is only accelerating.

Capital markets get stronger by the day. And I think we are seeing market sentiment and broad market sentiment out of those really involved in the business day to day, really start to appreciate what's going on in the office market and the durability of high-quality office in the cycle and in long-term growth. And I think as that sentiment and acceptance broadens, you're going to see transaction activity really pick up. We've seen it more broadly for real estate businesses that we sold last year around the world, and we expect it to pick up for high-quality assets. The exact timing is always as hard to give you, but I do think it's close to coming back in a meaningful way. And when it does come back, we will be poised to monetize a number of assets in the portfolio.

And our next question that will come from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

Thanks very much, and good morning. With respect to the plan to merge and BMT, if I recall correctly, there were some tax advantages associated with the holding [ DNT]. So I'm curious if losing those is effectively the cost of simplification. And to the extent that these were just paired securities, maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on how the insurance business was not previously benefiting from a full capital base of Brookfield.

Cherilyn, it's Nick. Listen, I think the -- we will be very focused as we work through this process over the next 12 months of preserving and maintaining all the operational benefits we have in the business. So you can be assured that we're focused on preserving that. I think today that it's a paired security but it is technically under insurance, a separate ownership structure.

So while per security, the ownership chain is slightly different. So as we have looked to capitalize BWS since inception, it has involved us actually moving capital over the business of the BN balance sheet. And I know that's a subtle difference, but having them under the single ownership will allow us to put the business under the total capital base of the organization. So it's a slight structural nuance. It served a lot of benefits as we've grown the business for inception, but there is a clear benefit now to putting them together and realizing that full potential.

Okay. That makes sense. And then a question on BWS and the reallocation of the flow to ban managed strategies. I think you reallocated $13 billion in 2025 versus annuity inflows of $20 billion. So I assume that still results in some timing-related pressure on the spread. Does that $13 billion need to step up in 2026? And can it step up as [ Dan ] holds first closes on 3 large flagships?

Cherilyn, it's Sachin. So first, the $13 billion that we invested into BIM strategies, that represents the illiquid private portion of our total asset base, which today is about 50% liquid, 50% private and we'll stay in that range. So I would say, in fact, as we've been rotating the asset portfolios from companies that we've acquired, we're exceeding our 50% target because we started with a very large liquid base of assets.

So as money comes in, you should think of it that in general, half the money will stay in liquid cash and liquid securities and half the money will go into Brookfield private fund strategies or other opportunities that come into the Brookfield investment universe. So I'm not worried that we won't be able to keep pace. In fact, we've been exceeding the run rate pace that we need to achieve.

Okay. So if I understand that correctly, basically $10 billion of the $20 billion should have gone into private strategies. And so the $3 billion is kind of a catch-up on the liquidity that you had entering the year. Is that a good way to think about it?

Yes, that's correct. If you were to keep it very simple, that's the correct way to think about it.

And that will come from the line of Sohrab Movahedi with BMO Capital Markets.

Okay. Sachin, I wonder if you could just unpack something you said a little bit earlier in -- I think in response to kind of managing the cost of funds you were talking about having the flexibility or the ability to kind of allocate capital to the lowest kind of cost of fund I guess, jurisdictions to generate the returns. When I look at your cost of funds throughout the year, presumably, you've been doing that. So is this as good as it gets -- or can cost of funds come lower from here? And how quickly can you pivot from one jurisdiction to another in the capital allocation?

Sohrab, so first of all, it's not as good as it gets. I think there's still -- there's always room to do things better in a business. I think Japan, in general, is a low funding cost market. So as we build out there, that should help us drive our funding cost down. The P&C business is when run well, and you saw it in this year's results, we had 0 cost of funds. So they meaningfully drive down your funding cost. And as we grow both of those areas of the business, you should see that help drive the weighted average cost of funding down.

In terms of the speed at which you can move, we're in the market every day. We have products that get repriced on the annuity side monthly. And so we can pull back pretty quickly. Pension markets are bid on as individual transactions. And when they get too expensive for us, we pull back on bidding on them. and P&C float has a shorter duration. So you can quickly shrink your book if you feel like the markets there are either softening too much or there's too much capital chasing deals. So for us, it was important to have that level of diversity, and we think we can be pretty nimble.

Okay, that's excellent. And given that flexibility and nimbleness, is it aspirational of me to think you could move that 15% ROE higher? Or is that 15% target given everything you just said?

I think -- the way I would look at it is we are trying to maintain a pretty conservative balance sheet. We're trying to keep leverage levels low, and we're trying to keep capital base high. All of those things go against higher returns, as you can imagine, but they lead to a safer balance sheet and a higher quality of earnings.

If you couple that with our investment strategy and our ability to drive funding costs down, that's why we say mid-teens is our target. If we ran at the same operational leverage as maybe some of our peers in the space, the returns would be higher, but we would be taking more risk to do so. So I would look at it as if we're trying to build a business for a very long-term horizon, we're trying to do so where we've got a lot of excess capital, and we're pretty comfortable that mid-teens is just a good target for us to maintain.

I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ms. Katie Battaglia for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And with that, we'll end the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's program. You may now disconnect.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to introduce Bruce Flatt, CEO and Chair of the Board of Brookfield. Over the last several years, the Brookfield ecosystem has evolved into a leading global alternative asset manager with over $580 billion in fee-bearing capital across a wide range of strategies.

The firm also operates a fast-growing insurance business and annuities business on the other side of the house now under BN, with deep expertise across the investment landscape. We look forward to hearing Bruce's perspectives on the environment, obviously, what's in store from Brookfield over the next year and beyond.

So thank you for being here. It's always great to spend some time with you at this time of the year as we turn the page on to 2026. So thanks for doing it.

Thanks for having me.

So I wanted to start with a bit of a bigger picture question for you guys, really on the back of some of the targets you announced at the Investor Day a few months ago, which effectively calls for a doubling of the business. And you have lots going on. You're on your way there. 2025 was a strong start in terms of the fundraising targets that you laid out. But as you look out into 2026, talk to us about the fundraising environment and how you expect that year to shape up for Brookfield from a fundraising perspective.

So I think probably the most important thing for us is we have a very diversified business. We have a big real estate business, a big infrastructure business, big renewables business, a big credit business, a big private equity business. And each of those is spawning other strategies as we go. I think next year, we have 50 funds in the market. So this is a broad and diversified franchise, which just means that no one single business is so important to the franchise.

And secondly, the asset management business, when it was spun off is largely fees today, and it grows into carry over 5, 7, 10 years. But today, it's largely -- it's just fee-bearing capital that's generating fees not influenced by carry. And as a result of that, the resiliency of the business is extremely strong. And we just haven't had -- maybe because of the diversification and because of the operations mentality and because of the quality of the type of business we have, we just haven't had issues raising money.

We raised $120 billion last year -- in 2024, I think. We've raised $100 billion this year. I think next year will be larger because we have a lot of our big funds in the market next year coming or starting now and through into next year. So we just haven't had the issues with fundraising that a lot of people have had.

When -- I think the issues have been if you're in a single industry or an industry that got hit a lot, like clearly, some of those issues affected us. But when you have a broad, highly diversified and highly global business, we just get the benefits from that.

Yes. Let's spend a couple of minutes on some of the bigger initiatives you guys have coming up. Obviously, AI, all things AI, AI infrastructure has been incredibly topical for the space, but really for you guys as one of the leaders in the space. You've actually described AI infrastructure as a multitrillion dollar capital formation cycle. You've been executing against that opportunity well with obviously a number of partnerships. You're in the middle of raising your large AI infrastructure program as well. You talked about that space being $100 billion of assets to Brookfield at some point of time potentially.

So what are the priorities into next year as you're building out this ecosystem, how the fundraising dialog is coming along as you're embarking on this kind of next leg of your journey?

So maybe the first thing just to step back and identify is that the single #1 thing that's important for artificial intelligence as we build out the backbone of intelligence is power. The biggest gaping hole in virtually every single country in the world, but in particular, in the United States is the fact that we do not have enough power to power AI. So we're -- we happen to be extremely lucky that we've been in the power business for our whole -- in fact, the whole company's history, but in particular, in the last 40 years. And we're the largest builder, operator, owner of power plants in the world in many different types of technologies. So that's the most important thing.

Second, what's going on now is that the fundamental backbone layer of artificial intelligence is being laid down. And the way I would refer to it is, in years past, we laid down railways, and we put down roads and we put down water systems, and we put down in the last 25 years, fiber and mobile networks. And now what's happening is we're laying down this artificial intelligence network. And countries need to have artificial intelligence networks or their companies and their systems of government will fall behind. So every single country in the world and every hyperscaler who are leading this are looking to build artificial intelligence infrastructure to warehouse compute capacity for their companies and for their countries.

And what's probably the most important thing because we decide the stock market. There's only a certain number of stocks out there. Therefore, when money tries to push towards one set of stocks, the PE multiples go up. But if you look at the fundamentals of what we do is we just build backbone infrastructure for companies or countries. So we've done transactions and we provide them power or we provide them compute capacity or data centers. We've done transactions with Microsoft and Google and Sweden and France and Qatar this morning, and we continue to build out in the United States. And all of that is really just the necessary backbone.

So I think probably the most important thing to leave you and everyone with is no matter what happens in stock markets, this artificial intelligence backbone build-out is very large, will be going on for 15 years. And those that have the operating capability to lay down the fiber, we'll be doing it for 15 years and the counterparty contracts in it are extremely good. And if you know what you're doing, very few mistakes will be made. And that's probably the most important thing.

So this -- back to your original question is how big is this going to be? It's going to be very, very large. And it affects everything. It affects our power business because we can't build enough. It affects our infrastructure business because all data centers and all types of infrastructure are getting affected by it. We set a separate fund up because we didn't want to gulf our infrastructure fund with artificial intelligence only. Therefore, we're -- we have a separate fund for that. It affects our real estate fund because many of our industrial sites that we have today, we're reverting away from industrial logistics to data centers if we have power and if we can locate the building.

So it's affecting all of these businesses. And of course, when these conditions exist, one has to be very careful. And I know that we will be and some others will be and some will not be. And they'll make mistakes along the way like always.

Yes. So just maybe double-clicking on that, given your exposure to this ecosystem and given all the headline concerns that we've seen, especially in a couple of months around the AI theme and potentially areas of overheating, how do you make sure you don't make some of those mistakes? So what areas you're avoiding and where are you leaning in?

I would just say that we've been building backbone infrastructure for the global best in various forms for our whole existence. And this backbone infrastructure is no different. The technology may be different. The companies or countries you're dealing with may be different. In fact, difference number one is they're all better credits than we used to deal with when we dealt with mining companies or forest companies or businesses that rented our real estate. But this is actually the same thing.

This is really just a real estate business. We build things, rent them to people, take credit risk and make sure that we have long enough contracts to get all our money back and a return on that capital. It's really -- this is really simple. People will make mistakes, but it's really simple at the fundamental basis of it.

And the good news is we have huge operating teams in all of these places to build out this infrastructure, but people will make mistakes when they don't know what they're doing on construction and building. They don't have financing properly put in place. They make missteps on contracting with counterparties. Those are the 3 risks. But they're all the same 3 risks that have always been in place, but every type of infrastructure in the world.

And I think the most important thing here is this is just for what we do anyway. Like we're not a technology provider, and we're not intending to be. We're just behind the scenes providing infrastructure like we always have.

Yes. So back to your original point where there's really not enough capital in the world today to support it. There's certainly not enough government capital to really support this. So when you think about your initial leg into this theme, you have the big AI fund that you're fundraising today. What are the vehicles? What are the products? What are the strategies you think could evolve around that? And when I think about Brookfield's history of building businesses, transition business is in one of the examples, more recent examples. How big do you think the AI infrastructure business will be for you guys over the next several years?

First point is there is enough money in the world to fund this because there's $60 trillion in sovereign institutional plans around the world. There's $40 trillion, $50 trillion of retail money that's out there. So there's $100 trillion. The funding we're talking $10 trillion. What you need to do -- it all sounds like small numbers. But what you need to do is figure out what's lacking is people to convert the $100 trillion into the $10 trillion. You need owner operators that know what they're doing and have the trust of countries and hyperscalers to be able to do that.

That's really what it is. It's the skilled intermediaries to build infrastructure and raise money from that $100 trillion to build out the $10 trillion. And so there is enough money. It's just -- we just have to figure that out.

And I would say what's important today is that the hyperscalers don't have enough money on their balance sheets. They're spending, I think it's quoted this year, $600 billion. It's estimated at $500 billion, $600 billion a year over the next 5, 7, 10 years. That's a lot of money even for $3 trillion to $5 trillion companies if they keep stacking it on the balance sheet. So they need access to groups like us that can convert the $100 trillion into investments that support their business and infrastructure. And the bottom line is that's what we've been doing in various businesses we have for many, many decades.

Great. Okay. Let's pivot away from AI for a minute. To your point earlier, Brookfield has a really diverse set of businesses across a number of different verticals. Where else are you finding interesting deployment opportunity? It feels like the pace of deployment has steadily been picking up. What else is interesting for you guys in terms of capital deployment over the next 12 to 18 months?

So I think in '25 to date, we invested $110 billion across the business, and it's pretty well diversified. We've done a lot of private equity businesses. We put a lot of money into real estate. We just announced a transaction in Australia, buying storage for $2.5 billion with GIC as a partner. We've done a lot of infrastructure deals, renewable power deals. We just did the deal with Westinghouse on nuclear. So it's pretty broad.

And I'd say that's the -- the success of our business is keep broadening the business and over time, keep growing it, but never concentrated in any one area because when you're building a business for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, being diversified helps. And it means that we're never subject to the markets. And if things are valued too high in one sector, we can just allocate capital somewhere else.

Yes. The other side of that coin is obviously monetization activity. It's been a place where the industry has sort of struggled for the last couple of years. It's really nice to see finally turning the corner in 2025. It's certainly been -- it's been a better year for realizations for the space. It's been a better year for you guys as well. I think over $75 billion of sales year-to-date through Q3. It's really across the franchise.

How should investors think about Brookfield's monetization outlook in 2026? And then within that, maybe talk a little bit about what are the segments or the product categories that are likely to be the biggest sellers?

One never knows what the future brings, but fundamental conditions out there are favorable towards continued monetizations and increasing monetizations for groups. Now still, there are some groups that are having difficulties because it's the type of businesses that they own. And I would say, in general, over the past 3, 4 years when monetizations were less, we did much, much better than average because most of the things we buy are cash flowing high-quality long-term businesses, which we've been able to sell.

And as you said, we sold $75 billion of investments this year. And if I took it in general, it was operating businesses, even in real estate, it was operating businesses which were very high quality that had teams to grow into the future. And largely, we did better monetizing outside the United States than inside the United States. With interest rates now coming down in the U.S. and with capital markets back I'd say, probably as efficient as they've ever been, you're going to see a lot of more monetizations in the United States, and that's good for us, but it's also good for the industry in general.

And the quantum, again, with the caveat that nobody has a crystal ball, but is the expectation '26 to be better than '25?

Yes, probably. I would say for us, it all just depends on the life cycle of different investments. We're not selling things just to sell. But generally, we sell $75 billion to $100 billion a year. Generally, we invest $100 billion to $125 billion a year. That keeps growing all the time as our funds get bigger and broader. But I think $75 billion to $100 billion next year is probably a good number.

Okay. All right. Let's pivot a little bit. I would love to spend some time on insurance and BWS, which is obviously part of Brookfield, the corporation, BN. It's been growing rapidly. You guys obviously established this platform as an investment-led insurance organization. It's really important to BN. It's really important to BAM. It's obviously very important to shareholders across probably both sides of that aisle.

So when you think about 2026 and beyond, can you talk about what are some of the levers you're pulling on to sustain the growth, number one? And number two, and perhaps more importantly, to continue to deliver 15-plus percent type of ROEs?

So for Brookfield Asset Management, I guess the simple point for it is it doesn't take exposure to insurance risk. It manages assets for institutional clients, retail clients and insurance businesses. And the largest client it has is Brookfield Corporation. Increasingly, it will become even a larger client because 4 or 5 years ago, we took $25 billion of the equity capital we had and we stuck it into an insurance business, into the equity of an insurance business. And now it's almost -- it will be almost $200 billion of assets shortly. And a lot of that capital is getting allocated in various strategies at Brookfield Asset Management. And we can't think of a better group to manage our capital. So I'd say that's what's important for Brookfield Asset Management.

At the parent company, our goal is to continue to seek financial services businesses that are -- can both earn us a very good long-term return on capital, but in addition, are symbiotic with the businesses that we have today. So insurance was super important to us because we thought we could invest into at a point in time, build the skills, make the early mistakes you always make when you're starting out in a business by getting into it at a point which was very fortuitous because interest rates were 0.

But the -- we thought it was a good business in itself, but it's an excellent business for the combined group because it will be a $500 billion business someday and all of that capital gets allocated to our asset management arm. And so it's -- there's a double win when we can do that. And increasingly, we continue to -- really our goal is seek capital with as little risk as possible on the liability side of the balance sheet and try to out-earn to earn excess returns by investing wisely. And that's always what we've done for our own balance sheet. That's always what we've done for our clients, and now we're just doing that for our insurance company is -- but we're not trying to take insurance risk and why we say it's an investment-led insurance company.

The difference is that we're not trying to take insurance risk to make money. What we're trying to do is minimize insurance risk, receive float and invest wisely. And that's -- it's just -- it's a different model that -- there are some that are like this, but it's different than most monoline insurance companies.

Right. So given, I guess, how important the investment capabilities are going to be for BWS to sustain the sort of 15% ROE, maybe even grow it over time. Talk to us a little bit about how the asset side of the balance sheet could evolve versus where it is today? What runway you see for utilizing more of Brookfield's asset management capabilities on the BWS balance sheet?

So our strategy so far has been as opposed to running an insurance company which just invests into traditional -- in traditional ways into both liquid and private credit. Our strategy has largely been a barbell approach not unlike what Berkshire Hathaway has always done, which is hold very large amounts of cash, which we hold today. And that allows you to put significant money into equity strategies, which earn much higher returns. So don't try to earn 7%, earn 3% in 14. And if you can earn 3% in 14, that averages to 7%.

But in our view, you can, a, earn a higher return on average if you do your job right, but b, you can take less risk because of the things that we know that we're doing. And the advantage that we have is that the strategies that are the underpinning of Brookfield Asset Management are long-term yielding cash flow type assets in renewables, infrastructure, real estate that are very well treated and earn excellent low-risk returns in an insurance company.

Got you. Another one on insurance topic for you, Property and Casualty. So I know when we talk about BWS, mostly is the annuities business. It's mostly the business that's been quite aligned with alternative asset managers when we look at a lot of your peers that are kind of participating in the same. You do have a small P&C business. What sort of strategy behind P&C? Is that a -- is it an opportunity? Do you see space to grow organically or maybe even via M&A? And how does that play into the symbiotic relationship with the asset manager because that's quite a different type of risk and probably different asset management strategy as well.

So the property and casualty business is a very diverse business, and most people think of it as we're underwriting hurricanes. That's not generally where we want to put our capital longer term because you're making risk and taking insurance risk. Our -- the business is small today. What we'd like to find is a relatively low-risk P&C area where we can become globally dominant and create float to be able to invest into our strategies, in particular, our higher earning equity strategies.

And as an example, we underwrite -- today, we underwrite insurance for real estate construction in New York City. And you might think we -- I hope you think that we have some knowledge to underwrite construction risk insurance in New York City as one of the largest owners of property in the city. So I don't know if that's one that we could take across the U.S. and then take across globally, but it's possible.

And so it's -- we're always trying to use the knowledge we have from our businesses and optimize our capital but earn low risk -- take low risk and earn a reasonable return by doing it but find areas where we have something special. I think we have something special in that. So we've been now -- we're now underwriting warehouses. We're a huge owner of logistics warehouses across the United States and globally. So we're now writing insurance for warehouses. We're writing insurance for renewable facilities. Of course, we know how to run renewable facilities and know how to replacement and are one of the largest insurers on the other side. So we know exactly what we're paying.

So we're trying to figure out -- we may never find one or we're going to find an amazing area where we can be a globally dominant player where we have more information than anyone else, and therefore, we can take risk that nobody else can. And then if we can do that, the goal is -- sorry, the goal is just take small amounts of risk on the liability side, create float to be able to allocate to our asset strategies.

Sure, sure. And if you don't find something like that inorganically, is there appetite to just write that kind of business organically and just kind of chug along and make it somewhat additive to the whole ecosystem?

Yes. Look, maybe we'll find one to buy. I don't know. In the absence of that, we'll just keep growing it organically. In the absence of that, we won't do it. Like the fact is that we have many things like that, that grow organically. Sometimes we find acquisitions. If we can't find it and it doesn't work, we'll shut it down.

So it's not -- these are all options. What our goal is how do we find low-risk float to be able to invest into using our investment skills to earn a higher return than we're paying on the float. And that's the simple strategy of BN. And Brookfield Asset Management is just there every day trying to put the money to work.

Great. Okay. Let's go back to Brookfield Asset Management discussion for a couple of minutes. I would love to get your thoughts on private credit. Obviously, it's been super topical for the last couple of months. It's your largest business. It accounts for about 1/3 of Brookfield's Asset Management management fees.

Now a lot of the concerns in the market have really been surrounding direct lending and some of the more levered part of the ecosystem. You guys actually don't have a whole lot of exposure there. But when you kind of zoom out and when you think about the multi-asset credit platform that you've built, what are some of the more attractive areas to deploy capital, number one? And how do you think about that platform growing over the next few years?

So again, it's important, but it's not everything. To us, we're highly diversified. So that's, I guess, the first point. Second is our -- we've spent the last 7, 8 years putting -- knitting together both organically within Brookfield and with a number of partner manager partnerships. We've been knitting together really a highly opportunistic credit business, which is our Oaktree franchise, alongside asset-backed finance, which we think will continue and continue to grow on the private side.

So when you think about it, it's funding of real estate, it's funding of infrastructure, it's funding of airplanes. It's funding of all of asset-backed finance. And our goal is to become the best asset-backed finance lender out there. And again, the reason is we think we have more information than most people who do this. Therefore, we should be able to earn either higher returns or take lower risk and earn the same returns.

And so we're continuing to grow that business. We're quite excited about it. And to the actual -- just the industry of private credit, I would say the private credit has caught a lot of headlines recently. I think everyone needs to just step back and consider the credit industry, of which Goldman Sachs participates in as well.

Last time I checked, yes.

And the credit industry right now, there aren't that many defaults. Defaults are very low. Credit is generally pretty strong. And you haven't seen a lot of issues. Now there's a few that came about that have been headlines. But this industry is not going away. There's going to be liquid credit and there's going to be private credit. Private credit is really what banks did for years, and a lot of that got pushed off the balance sheet to be able to ensure that they optimize their capital ratios.

And all private credit is we're accessing those clients we have over here with the $100 trillion to be able to put their money directly into loans. And our specialty is asset-backed finance and opportunistic, but everyone -- others will have their own specialties within each area they're in.

Great. All right. Another important area I wanted to make sure we talk about is real estate. Again, not a whole franchise, as you pointed out, you guys a diversified platform, but it's an important one. And it's important for both for a variety of reasons, right? It's important for BN on one end, and it's important for BAM on the other one.

So over the last few quarters, you've been pointing out signs of recovery, both on the fundamental side of the picture, but also the capital markets healing and hopefully, the lower rate environment will make it easier to start to sort of transact in the real estate space as well.

So as you look out into 2026, maybe talk to us a little bit about your plans for further monetizations out of the BN portfolio and sort of lessons learned so far in terms of the appetite for the assets that you're bringing in the market. And then on the fundraising side, at what point do you see healthier transaction activity translate into a more favorable fundraising outlook for real estate strategies?

So on fundraising, we just raised our big fund. I think it ended at $17.5 billion, if I'm not wrong, and circa that number. And therefore, there's not a lack of money out there for good sponsors who have good track records. That's point number one. I'd say the -- what happens in recoveries and this -- every cycle is different, especially in real estate. Every business, it's different, but real estate, in particular, every cycle is different. And this one is really weird because fundamentals are actually very, very strong. The issues have been in capital markets and some markets in the world, I'll say.

But capital markets got affected because of the psyche of people that real estate was bad because everyone went home and didn't go to the office and everyone didn't shop anymore, which both of those have been debunked, I think, would be the word to use. And so the fundamentals are actually very, very strong. In fact, I was reflecting this morning, we built 5 office buildings during COVID, 5 globally, Dubai, 1 in Dubai, 2 in London, 2 in New York, either got renovated or built, 3 in New York. They are 100% full today at 50% higher rents than pre-COVID and the highest rents ever signed in leases in each of those cities. That's an amazing fact. That's the worst business we've had, let alone storage, multifamily, et cetera, et cetera.

What the issue was is there was this psyche at the bottom of the market, compounded with interest rates went up fast and therefore, affected the capital structures of many people, many groups assets. And that was really the effect, and that's sorting itself out now. And capital markets are coming back. Transaction activity is coming back. All -- most assets are financeable today like in a normal fashion. And what that leads to is once you can finance assets because real estate can't be purchased without financing, once you can finance assets, sales start to come back. And you're seeing that today across the world. The U.S. was probably the heart of the most affected because interest rates went up the most and the fastest. But as interest rates come down here, you're going to see real estate come back even more.

Great. Perfect. Well, I think we'll leave it there. Bruce, thank you very much for joining us again this year. See you next year, hopefully, as well.

Thank you.

Hello, and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference call over to your first speaker, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation.

Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. As a reminder, we completed a three-for-two stock split on October 9, 2025. Accordingly, all per share amounts that are discussed during the conference call are on a post-split basis.

After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we request that you refrain from asking more than 2 questions. I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws.

These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impact on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, on the call. We delivered another strong quarter of financial results. Distributable earnings before realizations were $1.3 billion for the quarter, or $0.56 per share and $5.4 billion over the last 12 months. That was $2.27 per share. That was an 18% increase over the same period last year. Our outlook remains strong with each of our underlying businesses continuing to execute their strategic plans, driving strong organic earnings growth.

Turning first to markets. Economic activity and corporate earnings remain healthy. Capital markets are open and transaction activity is picking up across most asset classes. For our business, that backdrop is constructive and highly supportive of real assets. So far this year, we financed $140 billion of debt across our operations and closed $75 billion of asset sales at attractive values, including over $35 billion in just the past few months.

At the same time, the direction of monetary policy is turning. After an extended period of elevated interest rates, some softness in the labor market has started to prompt policy easing from the Federal Reserve to support growth and maintain balance across the economy.

And while the current environment is influencing policy decisions today, it is important to consider the structural forces that shape where policy goes from here. Over the past 15 years, governments have relied on fiscal stimulus offset slowdowns, leading to a buildup of public debt that is difficult to sustain in a higher interest rate environment.

Policymakers around the world are now evaluating the tools available to stabilize these debt burdens. The most constructive outcome of that and the one that we hope for is faster economic growth that outpaces debt, which can be helped by AI and innovation. Second, austerity is always possible, but not too many governments have shown the desire to push that.

And third, if growth stays modest, policymakers may instead quietly manage rates below inflation to ease debt burdens, lowering short rates and guiding long rates down. If this path is pursued, it would likely lead to a period of declining real yields and low nominal rates. This environment will provide the optimal conditions for real assets we invest into. Our portfolio is built around inflation-linked durable cash flows backed by hard assets that protect real returns.

The benefits of real assets are always evident, but in this evolving environment, they are becoming an essential investment product for every portfolio. A suppression of real yields will amplify these benefits and enhance long-term value across the franchise. Turning to the business. We are entering the final quarter of 2025 with strong momentum and a record almost $180 billion of deployable capital, position our business to invest for value in powerful secular trends that define the next chapter of growth in Brookfield, but also the global economy.

First, AI innovation is fueling unprecedented demand for large-scale infrastructure. Second, aging populations are reshaping global savings and driving demand for new wealth and retirement products, which is going to last for decades. And third, the real estate recovery is well underway. Nick will cover that and gaining momentum. Each of these trends represent a multi-decade opportunity to invest where our scale and expertise gives us a major advantage.

To that end, we advanced a number of strategic transactions during the quarter. In our Wealth Solutions business, we received shareholder approval for our acquisition of Just Group in the U.K., a region where growing retirement market is creating significant opportunities for long-term investment. We also announced a reinsurance agreement with a leading Japanese insurance company, marking our entry into Japan insurance market, the first of many expected opportunities in the region.

We agreed to acquire the remaining 26% of Oaktree that we don't own already, which will bring our ownership to 100% upon completion of the transaction. From the outset, our partnership with Oaktree has been grounded on shared principles, including a value-oriented approach to disciplined investing with a focus on compounding capital over time.

Our scale and real asset expertise combined with Oaktree's deep credit experience has created one of the most comprehensive and diversified credit platforms globally. Third, we continue to partner with leading institutions, corporates and governments around the world, and this is what makes our business different, combining capital expertise and our global reach to capture opportunities for all.

We have several initiatives underway to deliver the next generation of energy transition in AI infrastructure globally, and I'll just mention a few. Through Westinghouse, during the quarter, we partnered with the U.S. government to deliver $80 billion of nuclear reactors. For context, that is the equivalent of 8 large-scale nuclear plants, enough, for example, to power the entire state of Utah. These projects will help rebuild critical supply chains in the U.S. revitalize the domestic nuclear industry and marks an inflection point for the growth of nuclear energy in North America.

With Bloom Energy, we are developing 1 gigawatt of behind-the-meter power generation from fuel cells to meet the growing demand from AI data centers and other energy-intensive applications and we think this is just the beginning.

And through our strategic partnership with Figure recently announced a leading developer of humanoid robotics, we are providing access to our portfolio of real assets to create the real-world environments needed to develop, train and deploy this technology safely and effectively, positioning us, most importantly, at the forefront of one of the most significant technological advances of the coming decades.

Looking ahead, despite our size and scale today, our growth potential is greater than it has ever been. Our investment discipline, operating expertise and access to large-scale capital positions us to deliver another strong phase of growth for shareholders in years to come. As always, thank you for your support. We appreciate your continued interest in Brookfield and over to Nick.

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. We delivered strong financial results for the quarter, supported by continued momentum across our core businesses. Distributable Earnings, or DE, before realizations were $1.3 billion for the quarter or $0.56 per share and $5.4 billion over the last 12 months or $2.27 per share, representing an 18% increase over the prior year period.

Total DE, including realizations was $1.5 billion or $0.63 per share for the quarter and $6 billion or $2.54 per share over the last 12 months with total net income of $1.7 billion over the same period. Starting with our operating performance, each of our businesses continues to perform well.

Our Asset Management business generated distributable earnings of $687 million or $0.29 per share in the quarter and $2.7 billion or $1.14 per share over the last 12 months. Strong fundraising momentum led to $30 billion of inflows during the quarter and included over $6 billion from our retail and wealth clients.

Fee-related earnings increased by 17% to a record $754 million as fee-bearing capital grew to $581 billion. During the quarter, we held the final institutional close of our second vintage flagship global transition strategy with total commitments of $20 billion exceeding our target and marking the largest private fund globally dedicated to energy transition.

We also launched our seventh vintage flagship private equity fund focused on essential services and industrial businesses and are preparing to launch our inaugural AI infrastructure fund, which together will drive strong fundraising momentum going into 2026. Finally, jointly with Brookfield Asset Management, we announced the acquisition of the remaining interest in Oaktree, of which $1.4 billion will be funded by the corporation.

The transaction expands our ownership in Oaktree's carried interest fee-related earnings and balance sheet investments and further strengthens our global credit platform. Transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Turning to our Wealth Solutions business. We delivered another quarter of strong growth with distributable earnings of $420 million or $0.18 per share in the quarter and $1.7 billion or $0.70 per share over the last 12 months. This represents organic growth of over 15% year-over-year, supported by strong investment performance, robust underwriting across property and casualty lines and disciplined capital deployment.

During the quarter, we originated $5 billion of retail and institutional annuities, bringing our total insurance assets to $139 billion. Importantly, we continue to focus on raising long-duration liabilities with approximately 80% of new retail annuities written during the quarter, having durations of 5 years or longer. Our investment portfolio generated an average yield of 5.7%, contributing to spread related earnings that were 1.7% above our average cost of funds.

As we continue to reposition the portfolio into higher-yielding real asset investments sourced within Brookfield, we are well positioned to sustain strong spread-related earnings. During the quarter, we deployed $4 billion into Brookfield managed strategies at an average net yield of 9%, which helped support a 15% return on equity, consistent with our long-term target.

We also made meaningful progress internationally, expanding across the fast-growing retirement markets in the U.K. and Japan. In the U.K., we received shareholder approval for the acquisition of Just Group, which remains on track to close in the first half of 2026 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Upon closing, our insurance assets are expected to grow by approximately $40 billion to $180 billion. In Japan, we announced our first reinsurance agreement in the region with a leading Japanese insurance company to reinsure annuity policies on a full basis. These initiatives strengthen our position in key international markets and position us to capture the growing global demand for retirement solutions.

Our operating businesses continue to deliver growing and resilient cash flows generating distributable earnings of $336 million or $0.15 per share in the quarter and $1.7 billion or $0.72 per share over the last 12 months. These results underscore the strength of our operating performance and the continued momentum across each of the businesses.

Our infrastructure and renewable power and transition businesses remain at the forefront of secular trends, reshaping global investment opportunities. Recently, we announced new initiatives to advance next-generation power and AI infrastructure including our partnership with the U.S. government through Westinghouse to deliver $80 billion of new nuclear plants in the United States.

In our publicly listed private equity business, we announced plans to simplify its structure into a single listed corporate entity aimed at broadening the investor base and improving trading liquidity. Our real estate business continues to perform well, supported by improving market conditions and strong fundamentals.

Leasing activity remains concentrated in high-quality, well-located assets, driving strong operating performance across the portfolio. Our Supercore portfolio continues to outperform with 96% occupancy at the end of the quarter and our Core Plus portfolio, which shares similar high-quality characteristics ended the quarter with 95% occupancy.

During the quarter, we signed 3 million square feet of office leases with rents on newly signed leases averaging 15% above those expiring. Notably, at Canary Wharf, leasing activity remains very strong with over 450,000 square feet leased year-to-date putting 2025 on track to be its best leasing year in the past decade. The leasing pipeline is also the strongest it has been in years, underscoring the depth of demand for high-quality space and Canary Wharf positioned as 1 of the world's leading business destinations.

Turning to monetizations. Market conditions remain highly favorable for high-quality assets and businesses like the ones we own. To date this year, we have had $75 billion of monetizations across our franchise including $22 billion of real estate assets, $14 billion of infrastructure assets, nearly $11 billion of renewable assets, $7 billion from private equity and $21 billion from credit and other diversified assets.

Two recent highlights to note are as follows. In our infrastructure business, we completed the IPO of Rockpoint Gas Storage, one of the largest independent natural gas storage operators in North America. The offering was well received and oversubscribed raising CAD 810 million, the largest IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange since May 2022.

Following the IPO, we have now realized a multiple of capital over 3x for retaining significant ownership interest in the business. And in our real estate business, we advanced the sale of the remaining assets in our U.S. manufactured housing portfolio for $2.5 billion, resulting in a total investment IRR of 25% and a 3.5 multiple on invested capital.

Substantially all sales completed this year were at or above carrying values and have crystallized significant value for our clients at attractive returns. Through these monetizations, we realized $154 million of carried interest into income during this quarter. Importantly, because our earnings recognition follows European water for model where carried interest is recognized only after we have returned to funds invest the capital and achieved the preferred return.

A number of the realizations have advanced our mature funds closer to that carried interest realization. Shifting to capital allocation. During the quarter, we reinvested excess cash flow back into the business and returned to the $180 million to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. To date this year, we have repurchased over $950 million of shares in the open market at a roughly 50% discount to our view of intrinsic value.

Moving on to our balance sheet and liquidity. We continue to maintain a conservatively capitalized balance sheet and high levels of liquidity with record deployable capital of $178 billion at the end of the quarter. We also maintained strong access to the capital markets, executing $140 billion of financing so far this year, including the issuance of $650 million of 10-year senior notes at the corporation during the quarter.

Other notable financings include the successful refinancing of a $1.9 billion 5-year loan at a luxury resort in the Bahamas and 2 5-year CMBS issuances at New York trophy office buildings each over $1.25 billion, reinforcing the capital continues to flow to high-quality assets at attractive returns.

Bringing it all together, our financial results continue to be very strong, and we expect continued growth in our results over the remainder of the year and into 2026. I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.06 per share, payable at the end of December to shareholders of record at the close of business on December 16, 2025.

On a post-split basis, the quarterly dividend is consistent with the previous quarter's dividend. Thank you for your time, and I will now hand the call back to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

If we think about the pillars of your success over the years, I think it's been your ability to adapt the business and innovate in recent years. You've added wealth solutions, continue to grow that. But recently, you've made some partnerships around AI, humanoid, partnership with Figure as one example. So I was hoping you could talk about how you see humanoid and AI broadly potentially creating another leg of the stool for Brookfield over time. I remember at your Investor Day, I think, embedded in your 2030 DE guide was about $2.6 billion of DE from capital allocation. Maybe you could help unpack the components there and how you think about other different contributors over time.

Good morning Michael and thanks for the question. I would break the answer into 2 parts. I'd say most of the capital deployment and the focus that we have today is around building the backbone infrastructure to support the build-out of AI. The growing demand, the secular trend of the growth of AI, the need for compute capacity and also the need for the power to drive that and be able to supply the electricity for the compute capacity is where we are investing most of our time in our dollars right now.

And we have a very unique position around that, given our capability and our global reach and our operating expertise around renewable energy, nuclear and other energy sources and then our data center and AI fund that we're launching soon. So I'd say that, that offers great growth potential for the franchise, and we're very well positioned to participate in that and are investing in a disciplined way to drive really, really impressive results so far.

I'd say the second component and the figure transaction that you talked about. Brookfield Corporation, what we're doing is looking to stay ahead of the curve and deploy capital for the benefit of the rest of the organization and for the benefit of our operations.

And what we see with the developments in AI in humanoid robotics, we believe that over time, will have a material impact on the way that businesses are run an even broader society. And so I think this is about investing as a defensive investment and an opportunity to make money, but to really learn and be at the forefront for the benefit of the broader organization and we would look to do that, I'd say, over time, we'd look to do that selectively as we see good opportunities to do so.

So I don't think of this as necessarily the next leg. I think it's a force and a trend that's driving broad growth across the organization, and we're well positioned to participate in it.

Okay. And then just a follow-up question on Wealth Solutions. So you signed the first reinsurance agreement in Japan expanding your global footprint. I was hoping you could talk about that arrangement? How you see that contributing. What's the scope for others in Japan as well as elsewhere around the world. Maybe you could just update us on your global ambitions. Clearly, you have that transaction underway in the U.K. .

Yes. Thanks. My guess, as you mentioned, we made the transaction -- well, we've agreed the transaction in the U.K., and we're working towards closing that transaction in the early part of next year. That's a significant step for us, scaling PRT and giving us access to a long-duration local of low-risk liability -- sorry, long duration pool of low-risk liabilities. And so we're excited to close that.

That really sets us up well in the U.K. market. And we identified Asia and Japan as the next market that we look to grow into and doing that in partnership with local players. This reinsurance, it's a flow agreement. So it's really a transaction that will build over time, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter as we participate in the business that they're writing.

So it has the potential to scale and then it also has -- we also have the potential to partner with other local players. So very much about continued growth in both markets. And those are the 2 markets we're predominantly focused on outside of North America today.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Mario Saric with Scotiabank. .

Coming back to the Wealth Solutions business, Nick, I was wondering how long do you think it may take to get to your approximate 200 basis point target net investment yield spread? And then secondly, how should we think about the evolution of gross versus net insurance lows? I think in this quarter, it was -- the net was about 40% of growth. So just curious on what your thoughts are on those 2 items.

Yes. I mean, listen, the 200 basis points is a long-term -- medium- to long-term target. So it will take time to grow into it. And as you know, as cash comes in, we're very disciplined on the deployment. And we're looking at a sort of barbell approach on deployment sitting in significant short-term liquidity and balancing that with investment into real assets or in credit and equity. So it just takes time for the deployment.

But as we work through the plan, we do expect that spread to start to broaden out and work towards it. Importantly, we think about ROE, Mario, as opposed to just spread and the return on equity that we're generating and the capital is compounding at 15% plus, and that is in line with our long-term targets. We're very happy with the performance there. On the gross to net flows, it should stabilize out to about 1/3 outflows versus inflows in a quarter as we move forward. .

Got it. Okay. And then my follow-up, just with respect to the recently announced Oaktree acquisition, has the composition of the $3 billion purchase price between BAM BN shares and cash. Has that been settled? And how do you see the transaction impacting the velocity of BN share repurchases going forward, if at all?

So yes, Mario, we do have the elections finalized. And the end result, what I'd say roughly was $250 million of BN shares elected. The balance will be in cash and almost 100% of the BAM consideration will be in cash. And it will have zero impact on our buyback. We will buy back the 250 million of shares that we issue, but it won't have impact on our broader buyback strategy. .

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sacs. .

Just maybe zoning back to trajectory of the insurance business, so really good growth. So the sales are coming through nicely. On the spread, though, and I hear your comment around the ROE. But the spread, I think in annuities was 165 basis points this quarter. So maybe help us think through kind of the near-term dynamics over the last maybe 12 to 24 months on the trajectory of that spread as you kind of start to earn your way back towards the targets.

Yes. So first of all Alex, welcome to the call. I know it's your first one. It's great to have you. I'd just say that the spread is right 165, and it's really because we're being disciplined in deployment. And you know the way we think about the business. We run it for the long term. And so we're being patient in the deployment.

We are sourcing very attractive real asset investment opportunities in the credit and equity side, as I just said, and so as we look forward, we do expect it to work its way back up, but we're not running, as you know, the business quarter-to-quarter. We're running it long term. So we're going to be patient and wait for the right investment opportunities. And as they come in, you'll start to see that spread widen out. But again, what it all comes back to is the ROE. And so we're happy with the performance. .

Got you. And then for my follow-up, we will just maybe stay with insurance. Can you spend a couple of minutes maybe on how you're progressing towards closing the Just acquisition? I know there's probably a lot of limitations to what you could say publicly. But as you were to sort of frame the spread-related earnings contribution and then strategically, how you think this could accelerate growth of your presence outside the U.S. and PRT markets in U.K. and Europe broadly, which would be helpful to understand what this deal could mean financially for the business over kind of medium term.

So I do apologize because we are limited in what we can say, and we haven't really talked to date about what the pro forma looks like as we work our way through the regulatory approvals. I would just tell you that we're working through it. We have the shareholder vote. We're working with the regulator. As you know, we previously were licensed under Bluemont in the U.K., so we have a good relationship with PRI, but we're working through that process. .

I'd say that Just has got a good track record of issuing PRT on a consistent basis in the U.K., I think in the year before we acquired them about GBP 5 billion of origination. So we would expect to hopefully be able to continue that and scale it with our capital -- but as for performers, it will have to wait until we're further along in the process.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

Ever since the framework agreement to build new nuclear capacity in the U.S. was announced. The biggest question we've been getting from clients is -- to the extent that Brookfield alongside LPs will invest capital in nuclear project development, what kind of downside protection would you be seeking -- and is that investment likely to occur in a discrete nuclear strategy or in the DGTF strategy? .

Cherilyn, thanks for the question. So I'd say, first of all, I'd say that it's out it's been bought within Westinghouse. So the transaction that is being done is being done between Westinghouse and the U.S. government and the U.S. government is buying as the equity investor, $80 billion of nuclear facilities. Our role within that is to help deliver the facilities and then provide, as you know, the services that we provide, which is the fuel rods, the fuel and then the servicing of the facilities going forward.

So the end result will look very much like the Westinghouse business that we have today, which is to service and provide the fuel to the nuclear reactors, and it's really scaling Westinghouse as a global nuclear champion, but it will be done through Westinghouse which is owned by BGTF 1.

And maybe just extending that to the plans that are being evaluated in South Carolina, maybe you can elaborate on how that might be structured?

Yes. So again, we're in a process there, and it's very early days. But what I can tell you is, as we think about the growth in the space, we are focused on downside protection. So anything that we would do in the space where we're looking to get involved in either bringing Westinghouse services or Brookfield Capital and would be structured in a way to provide strong downside protection. .

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Kenneth Worthington with JPMorgan. .

You've talked in the past about 2025 being a transition year for carry. You've talked about the improved outlook going through 2030. Given what continues to be -- continues to look like a better M&A environment and a better realization environment with better valuations. Can you talk about how carry generation is shaping up for 2026 -- and then maybe wrapping the follow-up in the same question.

As we think about realizations, how are -- how is the outlook developing for realization on balance sheet versus realization in the Brookfield funds as you think about the intermediate term outlook, I guess, I'll be vague like that.

Thanks, Ken. So I'll just say that the outlook for carry hasn't changed. So this year, as we said, would be a bit of a bridge year and it's played out in that direction, largely consistent with last year. And with the monetizations that we have in the pipeline, either those that are progressed or that we plan on launching and through the end of this year or into the early part of next year, therefore, which should close in 2026.

We do still see the potential for a step up in carried interest in 2026. So that is still continuing to step up in 2026 and then again into '27 and a strong year in '28. So that's the outlook, the expectation of what we can achieve in the next 3 years really hasn't changed from what we presented at Investor Day and we're still optimistic and we still believe that it is a very healthy transaction market and the strong capital markets is supporting that activity.

As it relates to the split between the balance sheet and what's being done in the funds. As you know, we operate completely independently of each other. So we continue to advance the monetizations in the fund. It's a globally diversified portfolio of many assets in many geographies, so it has the ability to be a bit nimble around where assets are ready to trade and where the capital is there and the appetite is strong.

On the balance sheet, we're talking about the office and retail assets in the U.S., and I can tell you that the capital markets are stronger now even than when we had our last call when we talked about the strength of the markets. We had very successful financings in the quarter at spreads and all-in rates we couldn't have achieved even a month ago, and that all lends itself very favorably towards increasing transaction activity.

We've been able to dispose of a few smaller assets, which don't make a dent in the numbers, but they do show that appetite for acquisition activity is returning. So as that picks up, we expect to see continued activity into next year.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Bart Dziarski with RBC Capital Markets.

Just wanted to ask on real estate. So within the LP, the NOI really ticked up this quarter. So $465 million versus, I think, last year is about $80 million. So apologies if I missed this in the prepared remarks, but anything to call out there in terms of the drivers of that step up?

Hi, Bart. Yes. So listen, the performance of the LP portfolio is the running returns that we earn plus it's the disposition gains that we earned. So during the quarter, we benefited from disposition gains from monetization and that's what's driving the increase, sorry, in the FFO during the quarter. .

Okay. Got it. And then just a follow-up on carry. With regards to target carry framework that you have, could you help us kind of understand if there's a pickup that will -- like will the target carry increase once your Oaktree pickup deal closes? And if so, maybe a rough frame as to how much that could increase.

So we will own more of Oaktree target carries represents the kind of the annualized carry that's compounding for us. On the carry eligible capital that we manage. So yes, when we do acquire Atrium, we have more carry eligible capital, it will pick up, but it won't be material. It won't be a significant adjustment to the numbers that we have today.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Sohrab Movahedi with BMO .

Okay. I just wanted to go back to the earlier remarks about broadly speaking, the 3 types of economic environments that could play out. I think Bruce was talking to that. And I understand the implications of those from an investing perspective. Is any one environment of those three better than the others from a fundraising perspective?

Listen, I think, Sohrab, we've been through a pre severe cycle in just the last 5 years, and we've experienced a few environments in a very short period of time. And I think through all of that, demand for alternatives has stayed strong. And I mean specifically real asset alternatives and essential service investing.

So I think as it plays out -- the ones that we framed for you should still attract strong demand from the clients into the assets that we have, they've proven their durability the founder place in investment portfolios and investors now appreciate and like the characteristics of the income and the returns that they generate. And so I think that irrespective of where we end up demand for real assets will stay strong.

Okay. I appreciate that. I just wanted to see if there's a likelihood in a scenario, some of the targets that would have been discussed, let's say, at the Investor Day could actually get upgraded.

Sure. I mean, listen, if you go into the environment of sort of lower nominal yields then I do think real assets have the potential maybe to become even more attractive in that scenario. So maybe it could be an upside. But not to the extent that we've changed our plans today, we continue to drive the business and think that the growth outlook is incredibly strong already. .

And one moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Dean Wilkinson with CIBC World Markets.

Nick, I guess, when you look at growth of the business over time, do you hit a point where you start to worry about the law of large numbers? I mean the ability for you to put out capital is seeming to exceed the rapid rate that you're growing, BN and BAM and everything together, is there a point where that sort of flattens out? Or do you think that those opportunity sets are going to continue to grow quicker than you can actually grow the underlying business? .

I think it's exactly that. When we look today at the trends going on in the market and the amount of capital that is needed to deliver in the areas of the infrastructure renewable power we see that being a significant growth. And I think today, the scale of the opportunities are significant. I say the quality of the opportunities are probably the best we've ever seen.

And so the ability to earn returns while deploying large amounts of capital is a great place to be, and I don't think we foresee in the short term any shortage of opportunities to deploy and probably even in the medium and long term.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Jaeme Gloyn with National Bank.

Thanks, and sorry, I jumped on late, so I apologize if this was addressed. But in the Wealth Solutions business, just looking at the annuities distributable earnings from annuities stepped down a little bit quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year. hoping you can kind of talk through a little bit of the moving parts there. and as well as the -- looks like a 10 basis point step down in the yield on investments in that portfolio.

Yes. I would say there's nothing significant. The year-over-year performance. We continue to drive strong earnings. We may have had some one-off small movements in the portfolio of the earnings, but nothing significant.

The portfolio continues to perform incredibly well. The drop-down in the spread, which we touched on briefly earlier, is really just a product of capital coming in inflows coming really being parked in cash until we invest them. And the point I made earlier was that we're being very patient and waiting for the right real asset investment opportunities and getting the right time to put the capital to work and it will come. And as we put that capital to work, you'll start to see the spread increase again back towards long-term targets.

That is all the time we have for question and answers today. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Katie Battaglia for closing remarks. .

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And with that, we'll end the call. .

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Please welcome from Brookfield Corporation, Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Brookfield Corporation's 2025 Investor Day. Thank you for joining us today, whether you're here in person, participating virtually as well as those who attended Brookfield Asset Management's presentation earlier today. We greatly appreciate your continued interest in Brookfield. We have an exciting lineup for you this afternoon. We'll begin with opening remarks from our CEO, Bruce Flatt. Then our President, Nick Goodman, will provide an overview and the financial outlook for the corporation. Next, we'll have a presentation from Kevin McCrain, Managing Partner in our Real Estate Group. We will then hear from Sachin Shah, CEO of Brookfield Wealth Solutions. And finally, we'll wrap up with a few closing remarks before opening the floor to a Q&A session. When we get to the Q&A, if you're here in the room, microphones will be available. We ask that you please wait until a mic reaches you before asking a question so everyone can hear it clearly. voing&A,play QR code. We kindly ask you to take a moment, scan the screen and complete a brief survey. Your feedback is important and helps us improve future events. As always, I'd like to remind you that during the Q&A and throughout today's discussions, we may make forward-looking statements.

These statements are predictions about future events and trends and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those that we discuss today. For further details, please refer to our filings with the security regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the cautionary statements contained within our presentation, which are all available on our brand-new website. In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investment in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. And with that, please join me in welcoming our CEO, Bruce Flatt, to the stage.

So good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for staying. I have a little bit of time to tell you about what we're doing with the business and giving you an overview. And as you know, we strive to be the leading global investment firm and continue to do that. I guess our #1 goal is build long-term wealth for investors, clients, individuals, pension funds, sovereign funds around the world. And for 125 years, but some of us that are here for the last 30, 40 years, we've been building one of the largest discretionary pools of capital globally, which today on our balance sheet is around $180 billion of capital.

There's $135 billion now in the insurance business and almost -- and just over $1 trillion in the asset management business. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. Today, the business is in 50 countries. Maybe the most importantly, it's built to be extremely nimble. And it sounds like at the scale that we operate at, you can't be nimble, but we try to always be as -- very nimble to change and evolve our strategy over time. But one thing we're not nimble with is our discipline on how we invest your money. That has led to 19% annualized returns for 30 years, which always doesn't sound like that much. but that's a 27,000% return over 30 years. So it's -- that's a pretty amazing return. What that means is that if you look at these returns, the S&P 500 did 11%, we did 19%, that's 800 basis points more every single year for 30 years. It wasn't every single year, but on average, it was every single year. What's more interesting, most investment strategies get worse as you get bigger. Our 20-year returns are 16. Our 10-year returns are 17. Our 5-year returns are 22%. What it means is the business is maturing and getting better over time and scale actually is assisting us get better returns.

We've achieved that by evolving the business and innovating within the strategies, which I'll touch on. But the evolution, most importantly, is based on 2 things. One, we always adhere to the value investing tenets that we have within the company. And number two, we try to drive returns, as Anuj said earlier at the BAM presentation about operating out of our operating capabilities. Over time, our evolution has been, I would say, continuing but punctuated by some strategic things that we do every once in a while, which -- we spun our listed entities out in 2008. We started our wealth business in 2020. We spun off BAM in ' 23 to mention 3 recent things, which I think were extremely important for the business in the short term will be very strategic in the long term. Most importantly, as I've said to many of you, I said earlier, and I'll keep saying it, our view is that having access to capital wins. We've always tried to have the best access to capital that started with institutional investors, is leading to private wealth, has always been with banking relationships, has public market access and increasingly the public float that we build within the business will be extremely important to us. Innovation, on the other hand, drives long-term returns for our investors. And there's really just 3 things to make it simple that we do. We try to identify the trends on a big global basis that are going to affect the world that we can participate in.

We take those, package them into products for our clients, which then enables us to attract scale capital within each sector. Once we understand an industry, we move fast and we deploy at scale. We're not early, but once we understand it, we move fast and we deploy at scale. 50% of the assets that we operate with today didn't exist as an asset class for investable purposes 15 years ago. That's an evolution. Our leadership position allows us to build differentiated products. And as you can see here, they're in all of our different businesses, and we keep expanding out tangentially within each of the businesses we have to either get other strategies or to get other return profiles for investors that they're looking for. But despite widening out and doing other things, our investment approach has remained consistent and has essentially been a methodical and proven capital allocation process. We operate with a value investing thesis, taking moderate risk, aligning ourselves with our constituents, using our operating skills to squeeze extra returns out of it. And probably most importantly, the culture we have in the organization is extremely important. This has driven 25 years of growth, AUM to $1 trillion, operating income to $19 billion, share price from $2 to $66. So you did that for me last year. What about this year? So where are we now?

We're in the midst of 3 things going on with our business, which are going to foundationally change what we do in the business in a positive. AI is going to drive enormous things within owners of businesses if you get it right, and we believe we can get it right. Second, aging populations are demanding wealth products and are increasingly going to need those products to service their 401(k)s and other retirement systems. And third, on a more micro level, the real estate recovery is here, and it's coming back, and I'll cover each of those. On AI, you've seen our slides. This is a $7 trillion opportunity. We're ideally suited because of our power, our adjacencies, our compute infrastructure, our real estate businesses to participate in this. We have a number of AI factories that we're working on, which is around a $200 billion investment project over the next while, and this is just the beginning, and it's really just the start of what's going on in the world on the infrastructure side. This is a multi-decade opportunity that possibly is the largest business within our company within 10 years. Second, the retirement landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift. Aging populations need savings. DC plans in the U.S. are opening up. Once they open up in the U.S., they're going to open up globally.

And there is a structural need for wealth solutions. This shift is very powerful. In past, our money came from our own balance sheet. It came from our asset management business. Increasingly, it's going to come from individuals and people seeking wealth. Pension plans and sovereign plans who we've generally sought capital for is a $22 trillion market. 401(k)s and wealth is $40 trillion . We expect this third source of capital to support a doubling of the inflows into our business across all the different channels, which I would say is $100 billion from institutional funding annually, $50 billion from annuities, $50 billion from wealth. That's about a double of what we've done generally in the past. And on real estate, the third change. Operating fundamentals are strong. Capital markets are back or coming back. Interest rates are going to start declining or have declined around the world. Deal activity is coming back significantly. Where others pulled back, maybe this is most important, we remained active. It's allowed us to continue to grow the business over the last 5 years in many other sectors and many other places. Simply put, our real estate franchise is more dominant now than it's ever been. There are very few survivors like us in the business. Our franchise in real estate is stronger than ever. The next phase of our evolution is also here.

Thinking back, our history has been about understanding change and positioning ourselves to respond to that change. We're building our insurance unit to be a fully integrated investment-led insurance organization. Our corporation, our wealth solutions and our asset management business, and they all -- all of them working together. We've been asked by many, what does insurance-led investment-led insurance organization mean. And I'll touch on what we mean when we say that because I think this is extremely important for you to understand. Traditional insurance underwrites insurance and tries to make money by underwriting insurance. It takes the float it gets and it gives it to managers and tries to not lose money. Make profit out of insurance, don't lose money on float equals profitability of your insurance company. Most insurance companies operate that way. Investment-led insurance turns that upside down. We have extremely strong risk management. We try to achieve returns out of investments, we try not to lose money on insurance. We seek float. We don't seek scale. And it's really saying the opposite of what most insurance companies do. Insurance companies are good at what they do. They underwrite insurance they're trying to make profits. Investment-led insurance is the exact opposite of that, and that's what we're trying to do with the business. For us, we're led by investment opportunities, not inflows. Our capital gives us a competitive advantage.

Our core competencies suit insurance liabilities. Many of the things we do are long-tailed -- long-term -- long-tailed assets, which match long-term liabilities. Our long duration investing matches that float and our risk mitigation and management skills will enhance every insurance company that we participate in. Our model is designed to maximize capital efficiency and enhance returns without taking any more risk on the asset management side. In fact, probably we will take less risk. Bringing it together, investing in operating capabilities with wealth flows are a significant portion of the next future of Brookfield Corporation. What we're trying to do, and Sachin will explain this later, is mix liquid assets and be very liquid within our insurance businesses, crossed with heavy allocations to real asset investing in both debt and equity. The combination of those 2 are very attractive on a regulation and regulator basis and on a return basis and to earn 15% plus on the equity that we have in the business. When we spun out BAM, we told you we would find a business that was synergistic that could work with all of the other things we had that we would build within Brookfield Corporation that would deliver high-quality earnings that would enhance the efficiency of the balance sheet and that would support our other businesses we have in the company.

Our Wealth Solutions business, we think, is that. It has $26 billion of capital today. It has $135 billion of insurance assets. It's gone from 0 to $1.7 billion of distributable earnings, and Sachin will take you through where we're going in the future. With further integration of our capital into the insurance business, we expect to use that capital to grow the business to possibly $600 billion and maybe more. It will be done prudently. It will be done to ensure we earn attractive returns on the capital, but it will also drive the returns of Brookfield Asset Management as we allocate capital to them as a manager of our asset base. We will build this business with the same discipline that we've always built our businesses and think that we can be successful at doing this. As always, and this is paramount, we remain focused on delivering 15% plus returns for shareholders. I think it's easier today than it was 25 years ago because of the scale and the business that we have within Brookfield Corporation. So welcome to the next chapter of Brookfield, and I'll turn you over to Nick Goodman, who will take you through our financial results. Thank you.

Thanks, Bruce, and good afternoon. I'm going to provide an update on our business and I'm really going to distill everything down that you've heard today and will hear in the balance of the presentations into the numbers. Take a look back at our achievements, financial performance over the last 12 months and then go back and look at our performance over the last 5 years and show you how we've tracked against the plans that we laid out for you at our Investor Day in 2020. And yes, as you may recall, we did hold an in-person Investor Day in 2020. And some of you were here, 1 or 2. We will then look forward. I'll provide an update on our 5-year plan, focusing in on our private holdings. And in the process of the presentation, really showcasing to you the resilience, stability and predictability of our earnings with the punchline really being that the growth profile, the outlook and the numbers that we will present to you today is very strong. Over the last 5 years, we have delivered earnings growth of 22% on an annualized basis over the last 5 years, a 22% growth in earnings on an annualized basis over the next 5 years.

And we've grown our planned value ahead of our long-term targets of 15% plus, delivering planned value growth of 16% on an annualized basis. Importantly, as Bruce has just touched on, the foundations are in place to continue that trajectory of growth as we move forward. And we're really well positioned to continue to scale our earnings at 20% plus throughout the plan period. Now we did it for the last 5 years, and we're positioned to deliver again over the next 5 years. And that growth comes from 2 key areas. The first is us participating in the growth that is delivered by our core businesses. That's the growth coming from asset management, Wealth Solutions and our operating businesses. The second area is capital allocation. We take the excess cash flow that we generate in the business, and we reinvest it, planting the seeds for future earnings growth. But over the plan period, that adds another 5% to our growth. In total, that's 25% compound annual growth in earnings over the next 5 years. And this continues to be underpinned by a conservative balance sheet that's conservative in terms of our capitalization and maintaining high levels of liquidity, providing a platform for the franchise to deliver its evolution and its growth.

And with our business philosophy firmly in place, the earnings growth that we're projecting, we expect to deliver a planned value per share growth on an annualized basis over the next 5 years, again, ahead of our plans of 15%, delivering 16% growth, ending up at $210 a share in 5 years' time. So let's start with a review of the past. Last year, when we were at Investor Day, global interest rates were peaking or had peaked and were starting to come down. And we identified tailwinds that would come about from that, that would impact our business. And the real punchline was investors around the world on the back of that change had started to change their investment posture. Investors were going from risk off to risk on. And that played out in 3 key ways, or we expected it to play out in 3 key ways. First, rates coming down, combined with increased liquidity coming back to the capital markets, we expect would drive spreads down and lead to lower borrowing costs globally. Secondly, as investors look to move from the sidelines and put their capital to work, we expected an increase in transaction activity. And with increased liquidity and increased desire to invest, we expected higher valuations, higher multiples and lower cap rates. And we saw that play out in our earnings. We raised over $95 billion of capital in the business. We deployed $135 billion into new investments. We executed $155 billion of financings. And importantly, and a real step change to the last few years, we monetized over $75 billion of assets.

And you can see that in the earnings performance of our different businesses. Again, we delivered 21% growth in DE before realizations in the last 12 months, and that played through the different parts of our core businesses. Our asset management business increased its fee-related earnings by 18%. I touched on the last page that we raised over $95 billion of capital. But importantly, 75% of that came from complementary strategies, underlining the diversification that we've built in our asset management franchise. Our Wealth Solutions business delivered distributable earnings of $1.7 billion. But importantly, as we've scaled that business, we have maintained and sustained the return on equity in line with our long-term targets of 15% plus. And our operating businesses continue to benefit from strong operating fundamentals with our renewable power and transition and infrastructure businesses growing their FFO by 13%. In our real estate business, we delivered $5 billion of monetizations from the balance sheet. And in our private equity, essential service and cash flowing businesses, we grew EBITDA by 15%. In addition to that, we returned over $1.5 billion of capital to our shareholders. That was $500 million in regular dividends.

But as we saw the disconnect between our view of planned value and where the shares were trading in the market, we opportunistically repurchased over $1 billion of shares, adding value to each remaining share. Our valuation methodology for the business remains unchanged. We apply the relevant valuation technique or approach to each of our businesses based on their sector, cash flow, their outlook, their growth profile. And the value of the sum of the parts, the total is $161 billion today, net of debt or $102 per share. And here, you can see how that's broken out across our Asset Management, Wealth Solutions and our operating businesses. That planned value has increased by 22% in just the last 12 months. That's $28 billion of value added in just 12 months. The contribution comes from across the business. We've had strong performance within Asset Management, participating in the growth of Brookfield Asset Management and its capitalization, but growth has also come from other parts of Asset Management, our Wealth Solutions and our operating businesses. That planned value today as a multiple applied against our last 12 months earnings is 27x. But if we project out our plan, if we project out the earnings growth that we have for the business over the next 5 years and apply the valuation to an average of those next 5 years' earnings, the multiple drops to 16x, underlining the growth profile that we have in the business.

Now 5 years ago at Investor Day, which many of you probably were watching on a screen, we set our targets to grow our DE before realizations to $4.8 billion. We targeted 19% growth, and we plan to grow our planned value to $100 a share, and we exceeded that. We didn't grow by 19%. We grew by 22%, taking DE before realizations to $5.3 billion, and we increased our planned value to $102 per share. This is very important as we look back 5 years ago and look at the plans we set out, we surpassed them. And it's really important to keep in note as we think about the plan that we've set ourselves for the next 5 years. But better yet, as we've grown the business, we've also diversified our earnings streams. Within each of our businesses, within asset management, within our operating businesses, they've diversified. But as you can see from 2023 onwards, the contribution of our Wealth Solutions business, that's us taking our excess capital, seeding it into the business to build new earnings drivers for the franchise, and you can start to see that come through our earnings, which provides a great platform as we look forward. And we achieved a total return target ahead of our 15% that we target, the growth in plan value of 16%, the average dividend yield of 1%, taking the total compound annual return based on planned value to 17% over the last 5 years.

And as Bruce touched on, we've also delivered a really strong return to shareholders, 19% over the past 30-plus years, far in excess of comparable indices. But we still believe, despite the strong performance of our share price over the last 12 months, we still believe that the share price today offers a very attractive entry point to investors. If you think about the share price today against last 12-month earnings, it's an 18x DE multiple. But again, if we do the same analysis of projecting that out against our projected earnings for the next 5 years, on an average basis, that multiple drops to just 10x. So to say it again, we still believe today's share price offers a very, very attractive entry point for investors. So looking forward at the plan. Our value proposition, as I touched on at the beginning, it really is centered around 2 core themes. The first is our participation in the growth of our core businesses. The second is the value that we add by effectively allocating our excess cash flow and capital. And there are some key themes that we think are fueling the growth of the business. We've touched on some of them already, but just as a reminder, the increasing institutional and individual allocation to alternatives is driving growth across the franchise.

The scaling of BWS as a core part of Brookfield and an increased integration into the business is going to allow us to sustain our growth for the long term. The generational investment opportunities for AI will be a foundational component of many of our products that we offer to clients and where we look to deploy capital. And then more specifically, we expect declining interest rates, strong capital markets, the real estate recovery and increased transaction activity to directly benefit our earnings over the planned period. And this translates into a diversified earnings growth profile over the next 5 years with many different parts of the business all contributing to that growth. I would just point out on this slide that the growth in the operating businesses looks lower, but the earnings of those operating businesses are growing. We touched on renewable power infrastructure grew at 13% in just the last year. They continue to grow, but that is offset in this plan by the fact that we'll be monetizing real estate, which is in this bucket along the way. So let's dig into our core businesses. Our $180 billion of perpetual capital is spread across our 3 businesses: Asset Management, Wealth Solutions and operating businesses.

We can slice this a different way by looking at how that's broken out between our public and our private holdings. Our public holdings of $82 billion, they are covered extensively quarterly earnings materials, analyst coverage, they have their own Investor Days. So we're going to focus today on the private holdings, which totaled $98 billion in total. And we can break those down, there $98 billion in total into 4 areas. The first of those would be our direct investments. This is the capital that we have invested into funds managed by BAM totaling $12 billion today. The second is our carried interest. This is our right to earn a share of the profits generated for clients within the funds managed by BAM. We have our Wealth Solutions business, and then we have our on-balance sheet real estate. So if I take each of those in turn, and I start with our direct investments. The direct investments today total $12 billion. They're invested across a series of funds. But if you look at the target returns of these funds, on an average basis, those returns are in line with the long-term targets that we set for our capital, the 15% long-term target. And the funds are all performing in line with their target. What this means is our capital is compounding away at 15% plus, highly attractive investments for our balance sheet. If we project out our plan over the next 5 years, we expect to surface $5 billion of capital net of new investment from these investments over the next 5 years.

And there's 2 combinations there. Obviously, it's for monetizations of assets and return of capital. And the second is, as we move through the plan period, we expect our share of the investments into these funds to actually reduce over time. As Sachin scales BWS and it increases its allocation to equity investments, we expect to share more of these fund investments with BWS moving forward. So again, $12 billion invested today, and we expect to surface $5 billion of capital on a net basis over the next 5 years. Now turning to carried interest, and Hadley touched on this earlier, but I'm going to dig into a bit more detail and do a bit of a refresher. But really, carry continues to be a material component of our value proposition, and we believe it is still underestimated. We earn our carry from 2 sources. The first of these, we call our legacy funds. These are the funds that were raised before the separate listing of Brookfield Asset Management, i.e., funds that were raised before the end of 2022. For those funds, we earn 100% of the carried interest, 100%, but we also incur 100% of the costs. So this is a legacy -- this is a cash flow stream from funds raised before 2023 that will run off to 0 over time. And in that time, we will earn a combined margin of 65%. The second stream is what we call the royalty.

This is against funds raised from the start of 2023 onwards, where we have a perpetual right to earn 33% of the carry, and we incur 0 costs. This is effectively a perpetual royalty at a 100% margin. Now how that carry makes its way into income is also worth refreshing. We follow a European model for the waterfall as how it comes into income. That means we realize carry on a fund-by-fund basis, which is different to an American waterfall, which realizes carry on an investment-by-investment basis. We follow the life cycle set out on the page. First, we invest the capital of a fund. We then sell assets and return all of that capital to our clients. We work our way through the preferred return across the entire fund. And once that preferred return has been delivered, we start to realize carry on every incremental dollar. Now over the life of a fund, the carry you realize under a European and American waterfall is exactly the same. But under our approach, that recognition is deferred to later in the life of the fund. This approach ensures strong alignment of interest with our clients. We do not realize any carry until the risk of clawback is very remote. It derisks future carry recognition. And if you think about how you work through that waterfall, it also dramatically increases your line of sight to carry as you work through the process. And we believe that our carried interest is now very much at an inflection point.

The scale, diversification and number of the funds that we have right now is increasing dramatically the carry potential to Brookfield Corporation. Second, transaction activity, as you've seen in our results and recent achievements, has dramatically increased. That means we're returning more capital to our clients, which is going to result in larger, more stable and consistent stream of carried interest coming in cash and into income for the corporation. To put that into numbers, over the next 10 years, we expect the net realized carried interest to Brookfield Corporation to be $25 billion. It was just $4 billion for the last 10 years. We expect to be $25 billion in the next 10 years. If we narrow that time frame down even more to just the next 3 years, it's $6 billion of net realized carried interest that we expect to realize in cash and into income over that period. But you think about the line of sight we have to that $6 billion, 2/3 of the carry -- 2/3 of the $6 billion will come from 7 funds, just 7 funds that have a proven track record and on aggregate, have already returned 90% of their capital. So it's that increased line of sight that's giving us the confidence in our ability to recognize this carry into income over the plan period. And as I mentioned, the carry potential of the organization is increasing significantly.

If you think about the plans that were laid out by Connor and Hadley in their presentation, carry eligible capital is scaling to $575 billion over the next 5 years. As we execute our plans, buy for value and create value in our investments, annual generated carried interest is scaling to $7 billion 5 years from now. And realized carried interest is increasing up to $6 billion on a gross basis. Now if you look at the plan 5 years from now, you can see the gap between the gross and the net is widening out. What that is in practice is those legacy funds running off and the royalty funds starting to be the more meaningful contributor to carried interest for the corporation in the future, but still generating meaningful amounts of cash to the corporation as we move forward. Now we value this carried interest today at $34 billion. The valuation approach we have there is consistent with how we've shown it in the past. It's taking the target carried interest net, which is the carry compounding for us every day, the returns that we have against the carry eligible capital is $2.7 billion of annual net target carry today at a 10x multiple is a planned value of $27 billion. If we add on the accumulated unrealized carry, that is the amount that if we sold everything today at the current marks is what we would realize into income, add that to the $27 billion, and we have a value of $34 billion.

Now we've tried to come at this a slightly different way to validate the $34 billion. We've also run a DCF, and we've broken the DCF into 3 lines. We've done an NPV of the legacy funds, running out the cash flow that we expect to receive from those funds that are running off and discounted it back to today. We've done an NPV of the royalty cash flow stream, running out the royalty over the next 10 years and discounting it back. And lastly, we've applied a franchise value to the royalty stream at the end of the 10-year period and discounted it back today to prove out that the $34 billion at an 8.5% discount rate, and we run a small sensitivity. The punchline I would really have on carry is it's very meaningful to our value proposition. It will generate significant cash and income for the business for the next 5 years and as we move forward, and it's very valuable to the corporation. If I pull all that together and look at the overall growth profile that we have from the Asset Management business, distributable earnings from BAM, that is just our share of the growth of Brookfield Asset Management, 18% CAGR. Distributable earnings from our direct investments, they're growing, but our capital at risk is coming down as we reduce our investment.

And then the benefit and the realization of carried interest into income culminates in a 20% compound annual growth rate from our asset management business over the next 5 years. Now I'm going to touch quickly on Real Estate and Wealth Solutions, just to tie it into the plan, but Kevin and Sachin will be coming up to provide much more detail on those businesses. Bruce touched on it. Within real estate, we are very well positioned right now to capitalize on the global real estate recovery, and that recovery is very much underway, benefiting from declining interest rates, stronger capital markets and increased transaction activity. Fundamentally and importantly, the operating metrics of real estate are also improving significantly. We see this around the globe. Supply-demand fundamentals are firmly in favor of existing assets. And with the quality of the portfolio that we have, the deep operating capabilities that we have, we feel we're really well positioned to deliver meaningful growth from our real estate business. So what do we have to do over the next 5 years? We just have to execute, right? We've laid all the foundations. And as the markets improve, as the liquidity gets there, we need to refinance and as transaction activity picks up, if we have assets that we want to monetize, we have to monetize, and we have to execute.

Now these tailwinds are going to play out in 2 key ways for the business, stating the obvious, they're going to drive NOI and FFO growth, and they're going to facilitate the sale of assets. And if we are successful in executing these plans, we have the ability and the potential to generate up to $24 billion of cash on a gross basis as we execute the plan. In our real estate presentation when Kevin, you'll see the breakdown of the allocation of that cash. In all likelihood with that cash that comes in, some of that will be reinvested back into the business to pay off debt, but only to pay off debt in line with the reduction of the asset base that we're selling. And if we execute that and play it through, the planned value 5 years from now will be $15 billion, generating $640 million of earnings. Again, the real estate recovery is underway, and it's poised to deliver significant cash flow to our business. The Wealth Solutions business is scaling significantly, and it's scaling as a sustainable investment-led business. We've been focused since its inception on executing our growth plans. We've built leading origination platforms in the U.S., in Canada, in the U.K. now and focused on expanding further into Asia. As we've done this, we have maintained our discipline. This is a growth -- this is a business whose growth has been led by the investment opportunity set that we see, not by inflows. And in doing that, we've been able to sustain our 15% plus target returns on equity.

And importantly, we've been scaling without sacrificing the risk profile of overall Brookfield. If we can execute our plan for the business, we will scale insurance assets to $350 billion at the end of the plan period, more than doubling our earnings. And we believe that building the business in the way that we're doing it, building an investment-led insurance company will strengthen the overall growth profile of Brookfield for the long term. It drives long-term alignment, and it will drive long-term value creation. How that will play out in practice is we expect to see deeper integration and utilization of the Brookfield balance sheet to help scale the Wealth Solutions business. We expect that growth to have significant benefits for the Brookfield ecosystem. As BWS grows, it's going to offer more and more attractive opportunities for the corporation to invest capital at attractive returns. It's going to provide growth for Brookfield Asset Management. And at the same time, the Wealth Solutions business benefits from the deep investing and operating capabilities that BAM has to offer and it benefits from the capital that the corporation can provide it to achieve that growth. And importantly, with a business that's funded by our own balance sheet with our own capital, where we're focused on downside protection and where we have proven track record of returns, we create a very strong alignment of interest with the policyholders.

And as I said, we believe all of this can be achieved without changing the risk profile of our business. As I said, we believe we can more than double the earnings of the business over the next 5 years, taking earnings to $5.5 billion. We provided a range of valuation multiple 5 years from now. We use 15x today given the growth profile that we have. We used 12 last year, but we actually believe now that we can sustain this growth for the long term. So we're showing 12% to 15% in our plans, we're being more conservative in just adopting the 12%. But importantly, again, you can see that there's tremendous growth ahead of this business. The second key component of our value proposition is our capital allocation. And we have followed a disciplined centralized framework to capital allocation, and this is an approach that has been methodically developed and built and followed over many years. Our businesses every day are executing their plans. We own highly cash-generative businesses. They're generating cash every day. They are focused on their singular sector, singular industry. Our approach in Brookfield has always been to take that cash flow and move it up the chain to places where we have a broader perspective on capital allocation, where we can move the capital to where we see the best opportunity for deployment and the best returns at any point in time.

And it's that centralized approach to capital allocation and it's that flexibility that we believe is one of our greatest strengths. The focus areas once we have moved the cash up to the corporation and where we have that broader lens, we're focused on 4 key areas for capital allocation. The first of those is to support the growth and to invest alongside our core businesses. The second is to invest in strategic transactions. If you think back to the last 5 years, the acquisition or the investment in Oaktree and the scaling of BWS would be transformative investments that we've done. But we also invest -- make smaller investments, investing into smaller businesses where we think having risk or exposure will give us learnings that will be for the betterment of the overall franchise, and we continue to allocate small amounts of capital to these areas. We retain ample liquidity to defend against downside risk. If you think about just the last 5 years and the cycles that we've been through in the capital markets, retaining ample levels of liquidity ensures that at no point in the cycle are we ever forced to do anything that is value destructive at the worst point in time. After we've covered off those bases, we are left with capital to return to shareholders.

And as you know, we look to do that opportunistically predominantly through buybacks. Over the past 5 years, we have reinvested $31 billion of capital across our businesses. And I want to double-click on a couple of areas just to showcase the value that's added to the franchise. We've invested $12 billion of our capital to scale BWS, investing $12 billion to acquire companies at discounts to book value, where we've realized expense synergies, we've grown the annuity base. We've invested the float at much higher returns. And in doing so, we've turned that $12 billion into a business that we believe should be valued at $26 billion today. But importantly, against that $12 billion of capital, we're now generating $300 million today of fees to BAM, which will scale significantly over the next 5 years. And net of those fees, we're generating $1.7 billion of annual cash flow for the business, which again is going to scale over the next 5 years. So again, retaining that capital and reinvesting it back into the business has added significant cash flow and value to shareholders.

Secondly, over just the past 2 years, we have repurchased $2 billion of our own shares in the open market. As we've seen, the disconnect between value and price, we've repurchased shares at an average price of $44 a share, adding $2 a share of value to each remaining shareholder -- share, sorry.

Now looking forward over the plan period, we expect to generate $53 billion of free cash flow over the next 5 years. We've shown an illustrative allocation of that cash year-to-date. We're paying the dividends. We have assumed the retention of earnings within Wealth Solutions to support their growth. That is assumed but is not committed, and it will only be committed if the business can sustain its returns on equity. And even doing that, we would still have $25 billion of free cash flow available to either be reinvested or returned to shareholders.

So bringing it all together and providing the update to the 5-year plan, we are set up to deliver a 17% growth in our annualized DE before carried interest and before the impact of reinvestment over the next 5 years. That grows to 25% when you factor in the impact of realized carried interest and capital allocation. And you can see that, that growth comes from a diversified earnings stream across the franchise.

In graphs, that takes our DE before realizations and capital allocation to $6.90 5 years from now and total DE to $10.40 at the end of the plan period. And the planned value is actually growing in line with what we've delivered in the last 5 years, a 16% compound annual growth rate to $210 a share. And we believe with the foundations that we have in place with the business today, we are really only just getting started.

So the key takeaways I want you to have today from the presentation and everything you're going to hear from us today is that we are really well set up today to continue the trajectory of our earnings. Again, we grew at 20% plus over the last 5 years, and we expect to repeat that in the next 5 years. This continues to be underpinned by our conservative capitalization and high levels of liquidity. Carried interest is at an inflection point, and we expect it to be a meaningful contributor in the next 5 years.

BWS as an investment-led insurance company is positioned to enhance our capital efficiency and ensure that we can sustain the long-term growth trajectory of the business. And in conclusion, we're better positioned today than we've ever been to deliver 15% plus returns to our shareholders.

So I would ask that you stay tuned as we move forward. And I'll now hand over to Kevin to walk you through the real estate business.

Thank you, Nick. My name is Kevin McCrain, and I'm a managing partner in Brookfield's Real Estate Group. Today, I'm going to focus on and talk to you about why Brookfield's Real Estate business is poised to take advantage of the clear real estate recovery that is underway.

So first, the capital markets have returned, beginning to fuel buyers who have been relatively inactive as compared to past cycles. And second, the operating fundamentals are strong across the industry, including the office and retail sectors, which will be a focus of today's discussion. This is the foundation on why our portfolio of premier real estate assets is well positioned to deliver strong earnings growth during the plan period.

We anticipate generating $24 billion of capital through transactions during the plan period. But taking a step back and looking at our broader real estate business, our broader real estate business is comprised of 2 capital pools, our private fund investments and our balance sheet investments. Today, I'll focus on and take a deeper dive into our balance sheet assets. So over the past year, our balance sheet assets have performed extremely well.

We've signed 15 million square feet in leases across our office and retail businesses at rent rents 11% higher than expiring rents. We grew our NOI and monetized $5 billion of our balance sheet assets. The leasing that we've done over the last 12 to 24 months will begin to show up in our NOI growth over the next 12 to 24 months as those tenants begin to take over space and begin to pay rents. We've also completed $16 billion in financings across both our office and retail businesses, $8 billion from retail and $5 billion from office. So we've historically segmented our balance sheet assets into 2 groups: our core assets and our transitional and development assets. Last year, we put a spotlight on our core portfolio. We did this because these are our highest value assets with the highest growth. These are the assets that we believe we can continue to invest in over time and over the long term. But our operating teams have continued to work on our transitional and development assets to grow our NOIs and our value. We believe we should now segment this -- our transitional and development portfolio in order to give you a more granular understanding on the balance of our assets.

So this is what you've seen before. Our core business, which is 35 irreplaceable assets that are located in key global markets and our transitional and development assets, which are 151 assets that have value-added strategies tied to leasing and development that we plan to monetize over a defined period of time. Going forward, our portfolio is going to be segmented into 3 groups. Our supercore assets, which will comprise 34 of our most irreplaceable assets are premier properties located in key global markets. These assets are multifaceted, our most complex assets that we anticipate holding forever and continuing to invest in over time to create value. Our transitional and development assets will become our core-plus and value-add portfolios. Core-plus will be a collection of 57 assets, largely office and retail assets with growing NOIs that we intend to monetize over time. The key differentiating factor between core-plus and Supercore is not quality of our assets. The key differentiating factor is our core-plus assets have defined hold periods and either business plans that we intend to complete or have been completed. Our value-add assets will comprise a portfolio of 95 assets, primarily located in secondary markets that we intend to reposition to enhance our NOIs and ultimately monetize over time.

As you can see, the overwhelming majority of our invested equity sits in our supercore and core-plus portfolios, our supercore accounting for 60% of our invested capital and our core-plus portfolio accounting for 25%. Now while we spent last year highlighting our supercore portfolio, it's worth recapping here. This portfolio of 34 properties, 90% of the value sits in our U.S. and international office assets and our retail portfolio. They have an asset level LTV of 47%, 95% occupancy and account for $19 billion of our invested equity. 10 of these assets are trophy office assets located in key gateway cities, New York, London, Toronto and Dubai.

In New York, it includes Brookfield Place and Manhattan West, flagship office campuses that have 93% and 94% occupancy, respectively. In London, it includes 100 Bishopsgate, a 1 million square foot office tower that's 100% leased and has 14 years of WALT. It also includes the Canary Wharf estate and Brookfield Place Toronto. These assets have 94% occupancy, a 10-year WALT and account for over $8 billion of invested capital.

Our Super Core portfolio also includes 18 of the best shopping centers around the world. It includes 730 Fifth Avenue, also known as the Crown Building, which is located at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, probably the best retail corner in the world. It also includes Tysons Galleria, a pure luxury shopping destination outside Washington, D.C.; Shops at Merrick Park in Coral Gables, Miami; Fashion Show on the Las Vegas Strip and Shops at Merrick Park, a luxury shopping destination in San Antonio. Together, these assets generate almost $1,200 per square foot in sales and account for almost $9 billion of equity value.

And finally, our Super Core portfolio includes 6 residential and mixed-use assets. It includes the Eugene apartment building located in New York City and the Pendry Manhattan West. These assets together have almost $2 billion of equity value and an occupancy of 94% to 96%.

But today, we want to focus on our Core Plus portfolio. This portfolio, in almost any other business, would be considered Super Core. So our Core Plus portfolio is 57 assets, 27 office properties and 27 retail properties account for 99% of our $8 billion of equity value. Our office equity value is almost equally split between our North American office properties in New York, Toronto and Calgary and our international portfolio in London, Tokyo and Perth. These assets maintain a 44% loan-to-value and have 94% occupancy.

But when put side by side with our Super Core portfolio, the performance metrics are almost identical. As I mentioned, the key differentiating factor between these 2 portfolios is not quality. Our Super Core portfolio are just more complicated assets we intend to hold forever and continue to invest in over time to continue to create value. And our Core Plus portfolio are a collection of fantastic assets that we intend to hold for defined periods before monetizing and realizing on our business plans.

So looking at our Core Plus portfolio, which is a portfolio of 26 office buildings located in key global markets such as New York, London, Tokyo, Calgary and Perth. These assets together have a 91% occupancy and are some of the best located assets in their markets. You're going to hear from some of our office regional leaders in a little bit. And what they'll describe is significant upside in these assets given the growing demand for office space in their markets as well as the rising rental rates. These assets have 8 years of WALT and account for almost $3 billion of our equity.

Our Core Plus portfolio also includes 27 retail centers that generate a tremendous amount of sales and are located in growing markets such as Durham, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; Seattle and Salt Lake City. These assets generate $800 per square foot in sales, but the growing demographic profile of these markets will allow us to leverage our best-in-class operating team to continue to curate these assets to bring in new tenants that will increase our sales and our NOIs. Together, these assets have over $5 billion of equity.

We're going to spotlight some of our Core Plus office and retail assets when we get to our case studies. But for now, we'll turn to the office market. So you've been hearing from us over the last number of years about return-to-office trends. You've undoubtedly read the numerous news articles on the topic, and I assume all of you are back in the office yourselves. But this slide really tells the story of what's happened over the last 2 years.

So 2 years ago, only 5% of companies had a fully in-office work requirement, and the average work requirement amongst all companies was just over 2.5 days per week. Today, over half the companies have a fully in-office work requirement, and all company average work requirement is almost 4 days per week.

So what happens when everybody goes back to work? The demand for office space is soaring because companies vastly underestimated the amount of space they were going to need coming out of the pandemic. So everybody is back at work, and demand is soaring, but there is virtually no new office supply as office development was essentially paused coming out of the pandemic, and existing supply is being converted to other uses.

So what happens when everybody goes back to work? Demand is soaring for space, and there is no new supply coming online. There becomes a significant premium for new office space. The premium for new office space is averaging 60% globally. In markets like New York and London, it's over 100% and almost 80%, respectively. We are signing leases at our assets in these markets at over $250 a foot and over GBP 150 per foot. This increase in rental data is going to drive the entire market in the near term as tenants can't find new space will ultimately be looking to other Class A product to lease.

This is why our portfolio -- our office -- global office portfolio is well positioned to take advantage of the strengthening fundamentals across the sector. So now we want you to hear from a few of our regional leaders about what they're seeing in their markets and spotlighting a few of the assets in their regions.

[Presentation]

So this is why our office business is poised to deliver strong earnings growth during the plan period.

So turning to retail. All retail real estate is driven by the consumer. Consumer spending drives sales; sales, in turn, drive rents. Consistent and sustained sales growth will provide for consistent and sustained NOI growth. As you can see, since 2019, there has been consistent and sustained retail sales growth in the United States. And as of July, retail sales are over 140% of 2019 levels.

But this tracks what has happened in the U.S. historically. Retail sales in the U.S. grow by 3% to 4% annually. People like to go out, people like to shop, people like to eat, and people like to be entertained. We do not anticipate this changing. We anticipate consumer spending to be consistent and sustained go forward, which will lead to consistent and sustained sales growth and consistent and sustained NOI growth throughout our portfolio.

There is virtually no retail construction happening in the United States right now. Since 2015, retail construction has virtually ground to a halt with all new construction really focused on convenience-type retail and not shopping destinations. This directly impacts retailers who are starved for more space. Retailers make more money, specifically through their gross margins, selling through stores than through any other distribution channel, including digitally.

Store growth is a retailer's single best avenue to grow their revenue and their EBITDAs. This is why our portfolio is well positioned. We own and operate some of the most productive and iconic properties around the world.

Now taking a look at our Super Core and Core Plus retail centers side by side. And you'll see they both maintain high 90s occupancy and both have significant sales per foot. But the true uniqueness of our business is our best-in-class operating team that is capable of curating assets at the local market. We have one of the only operating teams capable of curating assets to meet local market needs on a national scale. Not every tenant belongs in every asset in every market we're in. The diverse demographics of the United States require a team capable of determining which tenant belongs in which space in which asset in which market. This provides for repeat customers, driving sales, which will ultimately drive our rents and NOIs.

So I'm going to turn to a couple of case studies on our Core Plus retail portfolio and starting with Alderwood Mall located in Lynnwood, Washington. This is a suburb north of Seattle that's very affluent and has an average household income of over $118,000 a year. This asset is 99% occupied and has seen its NOI growth grow by 50% since 2021. We just successfully refinanced our $290 million mortgage loan on this asset at a 5.9% interest rate.

To just double-click on that for a second, 12 months ago, that interest rate would have probably been around 6.5%. So the capital markets are seeing that quality retail assets like this are -- have much lower risk and are allowing for tighter interest rates.

So at Alderwood Mall, we've also recently completed development of an old Sears box. We redeveloped it into 76,000 feet of retail and 328 market rate apartments. The apartments are 96% leased. The retail is 100% leased. The retail generates $4 million of additional NOI at the property, and we've recently agreed to sell the apartments at a 4.7% cap rate.

The training is a Fashion Place mall located in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. This asset is primed for near- and medium-term growth alongside Salt Lake's 8.5% projected growth rate over the next 5 years. Fashion Place is 100% leased and generates almost $1,000 per square foot in sales. But this asset is a perfect example of how our operating team curate an asset alongside a growing and dynamic market. They undertook a strategy to replace underperforming brands with first-to-market brands looking to build market share. They brought in Zara, Aritzia and TravisMathew, and we've seen our sales increase by over 20% since 2021, and we have more tenants that have just opened and are opening, including Vuori, Coach, TAG and Seiko. We've also successfully just refinanced a $290 million mortgage on Fashion Place at 5.4% interest rate.

The Shops at Bravern is a pure luxury shopping destination located in Bellevue, Washington. This asset has seen tremendous sales growth over the last number of years with sales per square foot growing by over 70% since 2019 to almost $2,000 a foot. NOI has tracked this increase by growing at over 80% over that same period. We've signed or done renewal leases with tenants such as Hermes and Rolex, and we recently did an expansion with Moncler. We also just brought in a Michelin-recognized chef to open up a new restaurant to round out the customer offerings at the asset.

And finally, Streets at Southpoint located in Durham, North Carolina. This is a flagship Core Plus asset located in a 1.3 million person trade area that has an average household income of $134,000 a year. This is an asset we've continued to invest in, bringing in first-to-market brands such as Alo, Vuori and Aritzia, and that has seen our sales increase by over $70 million since 2021, and more concepts are on their way. DICK'S Sporting Goods is taking over an old Sears box and putting in their House of Sport concept, which is 150,000 feet and includes sports-related experiences for their customers. We've also successfully entitled excess land at this asset with 1,300 market rate units, providing additional upside to our NOI.

Street is 96% leased and generates over $350 million a year in sales. Given the growing demographic profile of Durham, alongside our curation and infill development strategy, we anticipate significant near- and medium-term growth to our NOI at this asset.

So bringing it all together. Over the planned period, we intend to continue actively leasing our office assets at higher rents to grow our NOIs and continuing our curation and infill development strategies at our retail assets to drive sales and ultimately, our NOIs. We intend to monetize our Core Plus and value-add assets and sell partial stakes in our Super Core assets. This should generate substantial cash over the planned period. As you can see, the $24 billion in dispositions was shown by Nick earlier today, ties right into here. And for purposes of this plan, we anticipated a $10 billion reinvestment in the portfolio. So if we're successful, we should generate $24 billion of capital from asset sales and provide $3 billion in regular dividends, all while generating a 4% same-store NOI growth throughout the portfolio.

So thank you, and I'll turn it over to Sachin to discuss Wealth Solutions.

All right. Last presentation of the day. Thank you for hanging in there. I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about Brookfield Wealth Solutions and what we've been building.

We set out 5 years ago to build, at the time, what we thought could be a scaled global wealth solutions provider. And I'd say where we are today, we -- our conviction is only stronger. We think we can build a business that can compound capital for many decades to come. And in many ways, is almost a perfect match to the things we do inside of Brookfield.

Just to remind you, there's really 2 drivers in this business that give us a strong runway of growth going into the future. One is underpinned by what we've done for decades, investing into the global economy at Brookfield, where we invest in areas that just have tremendous scale potential. And two, it was touched on by Bruce, Nick and others, this aging population phenomenon that's happening in the Western world and our ability to offer income-oriented products.

Just as a reminder, we've spent the last 25 years building out an investment franchise at Brookfield, focused in areas that have a multi-decade opportunity ahead of them and require trillions of dollars, and where we have a level of expertise that is unparalleled: Real estate, infrastructure, data, renewable power, nuclear energy. And you've heard people talk today about all the capabilities we have.

And often, when we talk about those capabilities and the operational capabilities that underpin them, one of the great benefits of that is that it allows us to dial the risk down in those investments. And risk mitigation, cash flow projections and duration are all things that are really important in an insurance balance sheet.

At the same time, we are in the midst and in the very early stages of what I just touched on a demographic shift that will take hold in the Western world where people will live longer than they ever have, and there's a declining birth rate and therefore, the age of the population base of the Western world is getting older. I'm going to just give you some stats here.

If you go back 100 years, it's not on this page. But if you go back 100 years in the United States, 1 in 20 people were over the age of 65, very young population, industrious nation, growth. Today, it's 1 in 6. And by 2050, it's 1 in 4. So 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 65. And if you think about what that means for individuals' needs, for retirement income or income later in life and what it means for social security and social welfare programs, it's going to put tremendous strain on fiscal balance sheets.

That phenomenon is not just a U.S. phenomenon, it's a Western world phenomenon, Europe, Japan, the U.K., Canada. All Western markets are facing the exact same dynamic as family sizes have come down and as people start to live longer.

And at the same time, if you go back the last 50 years, when almost everyone had a defined benefit pension plan, if you were in the workforce, today, it's almost no one. And so you have less protection, less guaranteed income and you have a larger cohort of people who actually need the things that those plans were designed to provide.

And if you sum it up from a math perspective, it means that in today's dollars, you have a $7 trillion retirement deficit. And with that backdrop, and the combination of very low interest rates, we set out 5 years ago to build out a business that we thought could take the things we're really good at, long-duration assets, in industries that were growing that generate cash flow. And if we do a good job, we could provide income streams to the exact demographic that's going to need it for many decades into the future.

And when we started out, we thought, okay, we'll do it as a reinsurer. We'll back reserves from -- or liabilities from other insurance companies. We very quickly pivoted and realized the great opportunity in this space was to be able to have your own distribution, to be able to write your own policies, to have networks of advisers and agents and partners that could distribute your product throughout the United States. And it led us down a path of making a series of acquisitions. By 2022, we had what we thought was the beginnings of a nice little business, $45 billion of assets, very diversified across annuities, life, reinsurance, P&C and pensions.

But we were also in the midst of a once-in-a-generation inflationary backdrop. And the headlines here demonstrate really since the early '80s, we had not seen that kind of inflation. The reason this is relevant is we've talked a lot today about what is investor-led or investment-led insurance really mean. It means that as an organization, we are not passengers or passive participants on the investment side. We're very active. And if you take the businesses that we acquired at that point in time, we took an investment mindset to them. We sold off virtually every long-duration asset inside the balance sheets of the companies we acquired.

We shortened the asset book down to 4 years. We stayed very liquid. We kept our liabilities long because they were written at low rates that were very attractive. We could not have predicted that rates would have gone up as fast as they did or even as high as they did. But odds were, they were going to increase. And the government and the Fed, in particular, was telling us they were going to increase. They were saying we have to increase rates. They went up very quickly. We captured a tremendous amount of value. That's an investment-led approach to running an insurance business. And capturing all that value allowed us to build the capital base, gave us the confidence that we could then continue to grow and look for acquisitions. And you can see it in the results. We'll deliver $1.7 billion of earnings this year from 0 5 years ago, and a lot of that is the benefit that we picked up in those early periods.

Along the way, by the end of last year, we've made 3 sizable acquisitions. We've done a number of small reinsurance deals. And maybe the most important thing, if you go through this is we acquired every business for value, acquiring below book value in most cases. If you look at American National, which is our first business we acquired, highly diversified; American Equity, a monoline writer of insurance annuities; and Argo, a specialty writer. And Argo is an interesting one because most specialty writers, when run properly in the United States, trade at 2.5 to 3.5x book value. This was a business that had some challenges, in particular, on the investment side. And we were able to acquire it for 1x book value, and we've taken the last few years rebuilding it into a specialty writer in the U.S. with an investment-led approach.

And we created business plans for all of these businesses. If you look at what we've been able to execute in these businesses, we sold all noncore lines of business at 1.6x a book. And what those noncore lines of business were, were not businesses that were bad insurance businesses. They just didn't fit the profile of what we wanted. We wanted low-risk liabilities that were highly predictable and that were stable. And there was many parts of the businesses we acquired like health care, term life, universal whole life products that were very insurance-driven or actuarially driven that just didn't fit our profile. They were more volatile. Even if they had embedded profits inside of them, they were unpredictable if you're an investment-led insurance company. So we sold off those businesses, and we started to work very hard on creating distribution.

American National had never done more than $1.5 billion of annuity production in its 100-year history. And American Equity had never done more than $4 billion to $6 billion per year ever in its history. So those 2 businesses combined would do $5 billion a year in the maximum amount of annuity production ever. We'll do $25 billion this year out of those. And that takes a commitment to the operations where you're building out distribution, you're working with independent marketing organizations, RIAs, advisers, your own agent network and selling your product through multiple channels throughout the United States. And more importantly, we're now working with the large-scale banks in the United States to get onto their platforms and further scale our distribution capabilities.

We also immediately realized that we needed to plug into our real estate infrastructure, power and other groups across the Brookfield ecosystem. In the first year alone, we reviewed over $50 billion of investment opportunities that were inside of Brookfield, where we had an embedded information advantage, an operating advantage, and we started to put those investment opportunities into the balance sheet of our insurance businesses. That number this year will exceed $100 billion. We will have reviewed over $100 billion of investment opportunities that are suitable for the insurance business.

We also maintain a significant amount of cash on hand. Again, high levels of liquidity, high levels of capital. Bruce touched on that sort of approach. In the insurance world, they call it a barbell approach, but really high levels of cash and liquidity combined with very suitable high-yielding private asset investments.

And lastly, we invested over $30 billion out of our balance sheet into BAM products and BAM funds, helping all of the products and funds we have scale, helping us design new fund products, helping us create products that were more relevant to other insurers. And all of this will help further the growth of the overall Brookfield franchise for a long time to come.

And what all of this led us down was a platform where we felt we had some foundational elements that were now built and could help us scale again in the future. Let's talk about that.

So first, what does investment-led mean? I know we've beaten this to death. But really, it's focus on where we have an embedded expertise, and that's all the things we do inside of Brookfield. But what we've not touched on is it also has an implication to leverage. If you're focused on investing where you have an information advantage and you have an advantage from an operating perspective and you can generate higher returns, you don't need to use leverage to generate your ROEs and therefore, dial your leverage down.

Most traditional insurance companies operate at mid-teens leverage. Some of them operate at 10 to 12, some operate as high as 20. We run our business at 6 to 8x, 7, 8x leverage. And that number will decrease over time as we build up capital inside the business. So we don't need to use leverage to create returns. The returns come from the investment side.

It also informs how we think of new products on the insurance side. Really, we're focused on low-risk predictable liabilities. It's why we sold off many of the noncore lines that were in the business in the first place.

And to put it in terms of just how we think about it from a returns perspective, you can see here what I was getting at in terms of the mix of privates versus liquids, the level of spread you can generate and the leverage. And all of that drives to, maybe at certain times, even a comparable return to other insurance companies, but with much less leverage, we view that as being a much higher quality of earnings stream coming out of our business because lower leverage, same returns, more durable cash flows, more predictable liabilities. And this has allowed us to actually deliver what we said we would deliver 5 years ago.

All of our businesses -- all of our insurance businesses operate with an A ratings. Two of our businesses got ratings upgrades over the last 3 years as we've been operating them and building up capital. We will generate over $2 billion of distributable earnings next year from 0 5 years ago. We have maintained a greater than 15% ROE since inception. This is an important point because what it means is every decision we make isn't just about growth. We're not just trying to grow AUM. We are making decisions to prioritize profitability over growth. And when you do that, there's times where you will scale back, and there's times we have scaled back. We could have pushed the envelope and actually distributed more or written more annuities, but we are very careful when we see rate movement in the market.

We've been able to do this without taking any third-party capital in. This is important because our capital at Brookfield is permanent. It's long term in nature, obviously. And therefore, it's fully aligned with policyholders who sometimes own products that will be with us for the next 20 years. If we buy a pension out of the pension markets today, we could be paying somebody for the next 25 years. Having permanent capital backing them ensures full alignment, ensures we make decisions with policyholders in mind. And that is a really important long-term reputational matter for us as the business grows and scales.

And then lastly, we have been very focused on making sure that we move beyond the U.S. and grow in markets where this phenomenon of aging populations will offer further scale opportunities.

So where do we go from here? The first 5 years have been very good. We have a great platform. But we now have the foundation in place to scale. Our in-house distribution, as I said, we now control the pen and the levers where, this year, we could do $25 billion of distribution. That number will only grow as we continue to build out those distribution relationships. We will maintain excess capital and liquidity, and the business today has $15 billion of cash and probably another $35 billion of short-term liquid securities that we could turn into cash overnight. And therefore, allows us to weather any sort of macro movement or event and be really opportunistic to deploy capital.

We often get asked why did we both retain a P&C business and then grow a P&C business? And our answer is, a, it diversifies the risk profile, which is a good thing. You don't want to have a business with just one singular risk; b, it allows us to have a regulatory regime that is more favorable towards equity-oriented strategies such that we can diversify the investment side of the house. We can do equities, we can do credit. It's also a low leverage business. And in specialty, where we operate Argo, it's not regulated, so you can write policies at anything that you think is economic.

With the announcement of our transaction in the U.K., we will now have a scaled platform in the U.K. and such that we can operate in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and we have the very early stages of a business in Japan that we're building out. And maybe most important is we have worked very hard with regulators to be transparent, to be leading, to make sure our disclosure is at the top end of their expectations and to default to overcommunication. This business is a regulated business, and you can either view that from a perspective of fear or you can look at it as an amazing moat around your business.

For us, it's an incredible moat. And the more we work with regulators, the more that moat widens and gives us protection and creates scarcity value for our business, and that's the approach we've taken. So we are taking a very active approach, making sure that rules are strong, transparency is strong, and that our regulators are our partners in this business going forward. And with all of this that we've built out, it now puts us in a perspective looking forward to be able to allocate capital to different jurisdictions and also to different lines of business.

So as I talked earlier about the demographic shift of people aging, I just want to put it a little bit into the numbers around the U.S. retirement system and assets sitting inside U.S. retirement systems. So today, if you take in 2025, you have over $40 trillion of assets sitting in U.S. retirement accounts. That will grow to over $100 trillion by 2040. And if you look at 20 years ago, you had about 7% sitting in annuities. That's grown to about 10% today and should grow to 15%, maybe more. What's driving that? It's driven by -- well, the retirement assets are growing because you have time value and you have more and more being contributed. But what's happening and in particular, with these changing rules in the U.S., is the combination of private alternative assets and annuities is going to allow individuals to earn an excellent return on the way up and then have a decumulation product on the way down.

And what we will be able to offer at Brookfield is that combination through Brookfield Asset Management of alternatives that give people higher returns over a long period of time; and through our annuity business, a decumulation product that gives them income for life. In effect, what we are building is almost a defined benefit-type system inside of retirement accounts, i.e., we can give people highly compelling returns, and we can give them through our annuity and insurance franchise a way to decumulate all of that for the totality of their lifetime. And this should present a very, very compelling opportunity for us to scale the business in the long term. If you take the other parts of the world, this is more meant to show the scale of the retirement assets in those as well.

All of this to say, with our recently announced acquisition, we will now have a platform with $180 billion of insurance float. Including the amount that the U.K. business distributes per year or participates in annually, we will start next year with $30 billion, $35 billion of new gross inflows coming to the business. We have about $10 billion of outflows, which means we should be $20 billion to $25 billion of net inflows year-over-year starting next year. So the numbers start to get staggering. And all of this positions us for highly compelling returns, but obviously, without compromising -- or highly compelling growth, but without compromising our returns.

I'm going to spend a little bit of time on value here because the other thing that we've seen over the last 3 years is that many of the platforms in the U.S. that have traded have traded at pretty healthy valuations. So if you look at -- and we're not going to call anybody out here, but 3 large-scale transactions in the U.S. where you have life and annuity players that have sold to alternative asset managers or private equity sponsors have all traded in that 1.4 to 2.2x book. And if you recall, we put up where we've been transacting, it implies the average book value multiple at about 1.8x.

If you take that and you take our group capital, which is how these multiples have been ascribed to our, what we call capital and surplus group capital of $17 billion and you deduct some holding company leverage we have, the business today, the capital in the business is worth $26 billion. So when Nick talked earlier about the fact that we've invested $12 billion, it's worth $26 billion. All that accretion has come through the system really to reflect the business we've built out.

If you take it the other way, where you say, okay, it's $26 billion, what does that imply for a multiple and you back solve the multiple based on the current earnings profile, it's about a 15x multiple. So for all the people who are modeling out the business, this is meant to demonstrate this is where these platforms are trading today. This is not our view of value. This is where the market trades. And it really just reflects that demographic shift and this enormous opportunity that's in front of us where everyone is looking at this saying, there's a large cohort of Americans who will need retirement income, and these platforms are designed to deliver into that.

And if we take that and we look forward 5 more years and we say, well, where can this all go? Again, from a pure assets that we could manage perspective and you start at that $180 billion, as I said, we should net out to about $20 billion to $25 billion a year net flows which, over 5 years, could add $100 billion to $125 billion.

And we've added some M&A here, highly likely. We will do a little bit of M&A along the way. It's not out of our track record. And so we feel pretty confident that we could get this business well in excess of $300 billion by the end of the decade. And again, if you run that through distributable earnings, it leads us to a path where the numbers become enormous, close to over $5 billion of distributable earnings by the end of the decade. So this business has tremendous, tremendous growth potential and really the ability to participate in this very large-scale demographic shift that's occurring.

From a value perspective, today, the business is worth around $20 a share for Brookfield. We're using next year's earnings at $2.1 billion. And that $2.1 billion is net of the fees that accrue to BAM. That's the net earnings that get retained inside the business. And by 2030, the business could be worth somewhere between $42 and $52 a share.

So I'm going to summarize some key points here. We have spent the last 5 years building out what we think is the next global part of Brookfield that should deliver growth for many decades to come. And the ingredients in the marketplace are set, and our job is to exploit those and really build out the business around them.

The opportunity set is enormous. It's enormous on the investment side of the house, and it's enormous on how we source capital. And if we can bring that together, there is a long runway ahead.

Maybe the most important thing we've done in the last 5 years is build the foundation for scale. The building blocks of this business are now in place with distribution, with the discipline that we have, with the capital we have, our regulatory expertise. And all of it will work as long as we stay committed to this investor-led or investment-led approach, which really forces the discipline to put great investments that are completely suited for long-term liabilities, keep the liability risk low, keep the volatility low and keep the leverage down. And if we just do all that, we'll have an amazing business.

Thank you. I'm going to hand it to Bruce now.

So thank you for enduring all of us. I only have 4 points to end on, and then I'll take a few questions. Cocktails start shortly.

Number one, Sachin said it better than I'll ever say it. We're positioning BWS as a major component of Brookfield. It started 5 years ago as nothing. It will be a major, major piece of Brookfield in the longer term.

The growing need of wealth is very significant, both from annuities, but also from our alternatives that are going to get fed into 401(k)s and retirement accounts around the world.

Sikander said it, many people talked about it. AI is probably one of the most significant things that's going to occur in the investment era in the last 50 years. Power grids are going to double in every single country of the world, double. They've been flat for 25 years. They're going to double. On top of that, we're going to build backbone artificial intelligence to drive productivity in businesses that's being led by the technology companies, and we're helping them do that. That is -- we're in the very, very early days of this, and it's going to be extremely significant. And last, Kevin talked about it, but the real estate recovery is on its way. We've seen this 5 times before or I've seen it 5 times before. This one's -- the psyche got hurt more this time, but the fundamentals are actually way, way better as we come out of the bottom of the market.

So with those 4 points, we'll conclude the information for the day. If the foundations are in place for -- to grow the business at 20% over the next 5 years, and we're excited about it. It should lead to a clear path to a 15% annualized return over the longer term. We stuck with 15% for 25 years. I don't know why we keep saying 15%. But it's -- but we use 15%. We're not changing it.

And I'll take any questions if there are any.

I have one question that was in -- that was sent in. I have one question here.

It's Cherilyn Radbourne from TD Cowen. Just on the topic of insurance, if we think back when Brookfield first brought in private capital to invest alongside the balance sheet, that increased capital efficiency, and using insurance should be another increase in capital efficiency. Like how would you sort of compare the magnitude?

Look, I think between wealth and annuities, and we kind of think of them the same. We always -- I don't know why this is, but we always build our business a little differently than everybody else. Our wealth product for mid-level income customers is going to be annuities; and for private wealth, wealthier customers is going to be a private wealth product. And so between annuity distribution and wealth distribution, I think the retirement markets opening up 20 years from today will be larger -- will be as large or larger than the institutional money that we run within the business writ large. So it's -- I'd say it's pretty transformational.

It's as -- it's going to be as big as what's happened, and I didn't know what was going to happen 25 years ago. We could see it. We thought it was coming. We just didn't know it was going to transact and -- but it took every single year for 25 years, it's grown. And I think that's just exactly what you're going to see in wealth. You're going to see every -- it's not going to be overnight. Like it never happens overnight. It's incrementally.

Today, you can see it happening. And every single year for the next 25 years, it's going to -- more capital is going to come from individuals. And all of a sudden, we're going to wake up 25 years from now, and it's going to be the same thing that happened in institutional accounts.

I have one question on the iPad, which I'm not sure I want to answer. What it says is, you're not doing a very good job. No, It actually doesn't say that. Closing the gap on the share price to the plan value, it seems to be the same as it was 5 years ago. And how -- what are you doing to achieve that?

And I would say the following. I actually think that the shares trading at some discount to what we believe the full value is. If you're liquidating -- we could achieve the value of full NAV of those numbers if we want to liquidate the business tomorrow morning. I'm quite confident we can sell all the businesses for probably premiums to those numbers. So if we all decided, all the shareholders got together, and we all decided let's just sell the business, I'm sure we could achieve those numbers.

What's more important is the shareholders own those businesses, and they continue to compound. And anyone that buys into it actually buys it at a discount, which means that the returns that we show you at growing at 20% and earning 15% are actually better. And I'd rather people come in and enter at a point where they're going to be more assured of a good experience with us for the next 20 years. And of course, it's always better if you trade closer to your liquidation value. But what's probably more important is that the businesses underlying keep growing. And the numbers, as stated, even if you don't narrow that discount and at times, we will and at times we do.

But even if you don't, the numbers are pretty compelling within the financial metrics of the business, and it gives us extreme optionality just to do things in the company. And the security we have at Brookfield Asset Management with the distribution and being a pure-play asset management business, that's where a lot of our growth is coming. And if we need a security to issue, it trades -- it has a peer group and a fundamental analysis where people look at it and trade, therefore, better in the marketplace and closer to value. And that's the one we -- and Brookfield Corporation, net-net, I don't think we've issued a share for 25 years. And I don't think we ever will have the intention of issuing a share again on a net basis. If we ever have to issue one, we'll buy them all back in the market. And it would be only because we did some transaction, somebody had to take -- we had to give them shares because that's what they wanted, we'd buy them all back in the stock market.

I'll take one more question, if there are any. There's one in the back.

Bruce, this is Bob Gottesman of First Manhattan. Question: With all of the assets that you're thinking about that are Brookfield related going into the insurance portfolio, what's the appropriateness of simply putting BN stock in insurance company portfolios? And how much is an appropriate amount? So first question, is this an appropriate investment for one of your insurance companies to own BN stock? And the second, what appropriate amount?

I think the answer is no. We wouldn't put -- in the insurance companies, we would not put BN shares into the insurance companies. Just from a related party standpoint, I think it would just be a stretch too far, and I don't think we would do it. I'm not saying it's not a good investment. I'm just saying a regulator may look at it and say that's not -- since it's the company that owns the regulated insurance business, I don't think we would -- that's not something we would do.

I'll use that just to segue to say that often, we say they're Brookfield-related products going into the insurance company, but they're really not Brookfield things. It's a loan we made to some company that Brookfield Asset Management originated, and it got put into the insurance company. And that's called the related party transaction. But in fact, it's not -- often it has nothing to do with "Brookfield." It's just being originated by the insurance company. And those things are how they're just defined under regulations.

Okay. You've endured enough. If you have time, we'd love to have a drink downstairs with you. If it's not raining outside, I don't know if it's raining. It will be outdoors. If it's raining, it will be indoors. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your support of Brookfield. We appreciate it a lot. And I hope you've got something out of today's presentation.

Hello, and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Second Quarter 2020 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. [Operator Instructions]

I would remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impact on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website.

In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, on the call. We delivered strong second quarter distributed earnings before realizations increased 13% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. That was $0.80 per share for the quarter and $5.3 billion or $3.36 per share for the last 12 months. Performance was supported by continued momentum across our core businesses and a significant pickup in transaction activity. Strong underlying operating fundamentals are driving demand and cash flow growth in both our asset management and operating businesses.

Our Wealth Solutions business continues to grow its asset base. And last week, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of pension risk transfer solutions in the United Kingdom. This acquisition builds on the foundation we established in the U.K. earlier this year and will allow us to accelerate our growth in the country. As already one of the largest infrastructure renewable and property investors in the U.K., this acquisition matches well with our capabilities and positions us to assist policyholders earn strong returns.

Turning briefly to the macro environment. Conditions continue to become increasingly constructive. During the quarter, as most of you will know, global equities hit all-time highs. Credit spreads tightened dramatically and interest rates remain largely unchanged, with growing expectations that we may see cuts on the short end of the curve in the next while. This relative stability has been supportive of increased monotone, which reflects both the quality of the businesses we own and assets we have. So far this year, we've completed $55 billion of asset sales, including $35 billion in the quarter, each generating excellent returns and returning meaningful capital to investors.

We also saw continued strength in the financing markets, where we opportunistically completed $94 billion of financings across the franchise, enabling our capital structure enhancing our capital structure and deploying significant capital within the business. Against this increasingly constructive backdrop, the key themes that ground our capital deployment, digitalization, deglobalization and decarbonization are accelerating. With a record $177 billion of deployable capital, we are well positioned to be at the forefront of these opportunities, including the next evolution of the build-out of the global economy.

As an example, we are launching our AI infrastructure strategy at the core of this strategy is the development of AI factories, which are large-scale integrated sites that combine power data shells and the equipment to provide compute capacity to the industry's leaders as well as governments and corporates seeking compute capacity. This effort draws on our strength of our global operating teams in real estate, power and infrastructure, each today, a global leader in their category. At the same time, global electricity demand is accelerating at a very dramatic pace, driven by power demand for the AI revolution and the broader electrification of the energy grid. This, coupled with AI infrastructure presents a tremendous investment opportunity, particularly for our renewables and our infrastructure platforms.

As the backbone of the global economy transforms so does our approach to investing our capital. Today, we have $180 billion of our own capital on our balance sheet, predominantly invested in real assets beside or to assist our clients, where we have deep investing and operating expertise. Our long-term plan is to further enhance the efficiency of our capital structure, thereby enhancing the returns we can earn on our equity without changing the risk profile of the business. This is being done by continuing to refocus overall Brookfield as an investment-led insurance organization. using our large-scale capital base to back low-risk long-duration insurance.

On the asset side of the balance sheet, Importantly, we remain focused on the exact same asset costs where we have proven best-in-class investment skills for decades and which are ideally suited for wealth and insurance. This shift is a natural extension of our platform to continue to drive long-term shareholder value. To date, we have had 2 primary sources of capital, the first being our balance sheet and the second being institutional capital in our Asset Management business. In this next evolution, besides those 2 amounts, we are focusing our balance sheet to back our growing insurance operations, meaning that our capital will increasingly come from individual investors via our insurance float.

Our intention is to continue funding our insurance operations from the Brookfield Corporation balance sheet to ensure that our policyholders and regulators know that we have our capital at risk to assist them. When we established our insurance business, we envisaged this as one arm of Brookfield. But after 5 years of meaningful growth and with a large number of opportunities ahead, this business is becoming increasingly foundational part of our long-term vision for Brookfield. There will be more to come, so stay tuned.

As we plan for the future, it's important also to reflect on what has been the foundation of our growth and success from past. Simply stated, it is our ability to consistently adapt and evolve with the shifts in the global economy, while staying focused on generating investment returns over the long term. This started 30 years ago with real estate move to pipelines and electricity transmission lines and is now led by renewable power data centers, fiber lines [ telecenters ] and more recently, AI infrastructure and battery storage which are just developing. Each step has been about anticipating where the world is going and positioning ourselves and our investors the center of each transformation.

Our view is that AI is next and coming after that is AI-led advances in manufacturing. The world is always evolving and is exciting to be involved. I will end my comments by saying that we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day on September 10 at Brookfield Place in New York. Additional details are on our website. And as always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. Over to Nick.

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Financial results were strong for the quarter. Distributable earnings or DE, before realizations were $1.3 billion or $0.80 per share, representing an increase of 13% per share over the prior year quarter. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5.3 billion or $3.36 per share. Total DE, including realizations was $1.4 billion or $0.88 per share for the quarter and $5.9 billion or $3.71 per share over the last 12 months with total net income of $2.9 billion over the same period.

Starting with our operating performance. Our Asset Management business generated distributable earnings of $650 million or $0.41 per share in the quarter and $2.7 billion or $1.72 per share over the last 12 months. Strong fundraising across our flagship funds and complementary strategies led to inflows during the quarter of $22 billion, including over $5 billion from our retail and wealth solutions clients. Fee-bearing capital grew to $563 billion, resulting in fee-related earnings of $676 million, an increase of 10% and 16%, respectively, over the prior year quarter.

With final closes anticipated for our fifth vintage flagship opportunistic real estate strategy and our second vintage global transition strategy, we expect fundraising momentum to continue into the second half of 2025, which should support further earnings growth. Our Wealth Solutions business delivered another quarter of strong results, benefiting from robust investment performance and disciplined capital deployment. Distributable operating earnings were $391 million or $0.25 per share in the quarter and $1.6 billion or $1.02 per share over the last 12 months.

During the quarter, we originated over $4 billion of retail and institutional annuities, bringing our total insurance assets to $135 billion. On the investment side, we deployed $3.5 billion into Brookfield managed strategies across our portfolio at an average net yield of 8%. Our investment portfolio generated an average yield of 5.8%, allowing us to achieve strong spread earnings, which were 1.8% higher than our average cost of funds.

On both an LTM and annualized basis, we continue to deliver a return on equity that's broadly in line with our long-term target of 15% plus. As Bruce mentioned, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a U.K. leader in buying pensions from companies who wish to get off the risks. This marks an important next step in scaling our global platform and expanding our presence in one of the world's fastest-growing retirement markets. Per the announcement, we plan to acquire the company for $3.2 billion and we plan to fund this with roughly 2/3 from an acquisition credit facility and the balance from cash on hand at BWS. While we anticipate net investment income will take some time to ramp up following the close, we expect the transaction to deliver a return on equity in line with the long-term target for the overall business of 15% plus.

With this acquisition, our insurance assets are expected to grow by approximately $40 billion, significantly accelerating the growth of our business and advancing a short-term path towards $200 billion of insurance assets. Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $358 million or $0.22 per share in the quarter and $1.7 billion or $1.07 per share over the last 12 months. These results were supported by strong underlying fundamentals and resilient operating earnings.

As an example, we signed a landmark agreement with Google to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity across the U.S., a first-of-its-kind partnership and a testament to our unique capabilities and demonstrates our relationships with the largest buyers of power in the world. In our real estate business, market fundamentals across the platform continue to strengthen. While this quarter's performance was impacted by softer conditions in our North American residential business, where land and housing sales have moderated, most of our real estate businesses performed well, and we saw strong same-store NOI growth across our core portfolio.

Demand for high-quality office and retail space remains the first choice for tenants with active requirements. We signed nearly 4 million square feet of office and retail leases during the quarter, reflecting both strong tenant demand and limited availability across our premium space. Our core office and retail assets continue to perform exceptionally well with occupancy in 94% and 97%, respectively. As the global supply of trophy office space tightens we're seeing leasing interest begin to spill over into other high-quality, well-located assets across our portfolio, and we are seeing this trend play out in real time.

For example, in downtown Toronto, one of our long-term tenants in the trophy office building approached us with expansion plans. With our trophy office space pool for a requirement of that size, we leveraged our broader platform to meet their needs by offering space in a nearby premium building where the ultimately 17-year lease. At the same time, we're already in late-stage discussions to backfill space we vacated at rents approximately 10% higher than prior levels. Rents in premium space are well above their highest on a net effective base ever. We expect this evolving shift in tenant demand to support performance across our broader office portfolio in the coming quarters.

Moving to monetization. Market sentiment is improving and is increasingly supporting -- supportive for transactions for high-quality assets. As Bruce mentioned, we've sold $55 billion of assets across the business so far this year, including over $35 billion since the last quarter alone. This includes $15 billion of real estate sales, nearly $13 billion of infrastructure investments and $7 billion within energy. Some highlights include in real estate, we exited a leading student housing platform in Southern Europe for EUR 1.2 billion, sold our triple net lease platform in the U.S. for $2.2 billion. We also completed the successful IPO of Leela Palaces in India, valuing the portfolio of $1.8 billion and marking the largest hospitality IPO in India's history, and we executed to AUD 3.9 billion sale of a senior living platform in Australia, the largest direct real estate transaction in the country's history.

In infrastructure, we sold our remaining interest in the U.S. gas pipeline for $1.4 billion of proceeds and a stake in PD ports, one of the U.K.'s largest port operations for approximately $1.3 billion of proceeds. In energy, we sold $7 billion in assets, generating an aggregate 17% IRR underscoring the strength of our strategy and execution while also illustrating the global demand for high-quality renewable power assets remain strong.

Substantially, all sales were completed at or above our carrying values monetizing significant value for our clients at attractive returns. And as a result, we realized $129 million of carried interest into income, but more importantly, with these asset sales, we've moved a number of our funds closer to carried interest realization. And finally, across our assets, which are not our super prime -- super premium assets, we continue to make progress on our monetization pipeline, completing over 10 transactions this year. One highlight was the sale of an office building in Washington, D.C. at an 11% premium to recent market comps. This generated a 5.5x multiple on invested capital. That is over 5x equity of what we invested.

As markets remain constructive, we expect this momentum and monetizations to continue through the remainder of 2025 and beyond as we continue to see strong demand for high-quality cash-generative assets we own.

Shifting to capital allocation. During the quarter, we invested excess cash flow back into the business and returned $432 million to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. Notably, we repurchased over $300 million of shares in the open market in the quarter at an average price of $49.03, adding $0.21 of value to each remaining share. We continue to main strong access to the capital markets executing $94 billion of financing so far this year, further bolstering our capital structure and liquidity.

And we ended the quarter with conservative capitalization and high levels of liquidity including record deployable capital of $177 billion. Bringing it all together, our financial results were strong, and we expect continued growth in our results over the remainder of the year. I'm pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share, payable at the end of September to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 12, 2025. The Board of Directors also approved a 3-for-2 stock split of the outstanding Class A limited voting shares, implemented by way of a stock dividend, which will be payable on October 9, 2025, to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 3, 2025.

Thank you for your time, and I will hand the call back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Bart Dziarski with RBC Capital Markets.

So just wanted to ask about the -- in the letter to shareholders, you talked about the growth that you're seeing in the P&C over time and potentially scaling that business to $30 billion to $50 billion of equity. So can you just unpack that a little bit and how you're thinking about getting there, what time frame and any inorganic or organic plans?

Bart, and welcome to the call. It's when we started this business, our focus was and still is to focus on low-risk liabilities, and that's meant the predominant focus so far has been on the annuity business, the PRT market, and that's where we've scaled significantly. We also identified P&C as a potential opportunity for us if we could find product lines where we felt we could bring a competitive advantage where the Brookfield experience and insight could allow us to scale something. And if operated well, we could run at a less than 100 combined ratio effectively giving us access to attractive float to be invested into the things that we do at Brookfield and it could be very profitable.

We've taken our time to assess that. We continue to assess it. But as we do and as we identify those markets where we think we could scale while managing risk and operating something differentiated, then we will do that and allocate capital to scale. So that will be done organically to begin with. And that's where we focus with Argo and some P&C within American National. We are refocusing those businesses on the lines that we think of long-term potential. And as we proceed, there could be inorganic opportunities. But for now, the focus is organic.

Great. And then just a follow-up on the pricing competitive advantage that you talked about within P&C. Like, help us understand some of those dynamics in terms of what you see in these assets your ability to price better than the incumbents?

I think that just comes down to risk tolerance, which comes down to your experience with an asset class, and that's leveraging our operating capabilities around the assets where we are not just an investor, but we've been an operator in those assets for a very long time, and that allows you to price risk better, we believe, while not actually increasing the risk profile of the business because we just have a deeper understanding of operations. So that's what we'll be leveraging as we look to grow.

Next question comes from Kenneth Worthington with JPMorgan.

I wanted to dig into carry and real estate disposition really centered around this theme of market conditions are getting better. So is the environment better enough to start to pull forward carry that might have logically been expected for 2027 and '26 into the second half of this year or maybe even early '26 if the market condition path sort of continues on its current trajectory.

And then from a real estate perspective, sort of fleshing out, Nick, your comments, are the additions better enough to pull forward the timing of dispositions on that T&D portfolio as well?

Thanks, Ken. So I'll start with the timing of carry. Listen, we are making excellent progress on the monetization. As you said, it's $55 billion year-to-date, and it's diversified across asset class and geography, which is very encouraging. The breadth and depth of interest from viruses has been very strong.

As it relates to carried interest, it obviously takes time. The market is strong. The focus today is on well-run assets with good platform, with good growth potential, and that's what we've been bringing to market. To bring them to market, to execute sales to complete the sales takes time. So I think what we are doing is executing probably in line with the plan that we had expected at the start of the year. And obviously, the capital markets and general conditions are being conducive to executing that plan. So it has not changed significantly our expected timing on carry. We would still expect this year to be sort of a bridge year broadly in line with last year and then see a significant step up into next year. And that will just really be dependent on the actual timing of the transactions and the processes. But right now, points to us being broadly in line with what we would have laid out before.

On real estate, what I'd say on real estate, my observation is we've talked extensively over the last few years, and we've been fairly consistent in saying that for real estate transaction activity pickup, we need 2 key foundations to be in place. One, we need to see the strong operating fundamentals and therefore, the sentiment turn more positive. And secondly, we need to see constructive capital markets to support transaction activity. And I'd say that both of those boxes feel like they are checked now, the operating fundamentals for high-quality real estate across the board are very strong. Specifically, as you're asking on balance sheet for office and retail as we talked about, the occupancy is high, supply-demand fundamentals are heavily in our favor. And that is why we're seeing consistent record rents signed across the portfolio and across the globe.

So I think with those 2 boxes checked, we're now starting to see transaction activity pick up. Within the T&D portfolio, we said well over 13 assets so far this year. We have a lot of assets there that's contributing equity, and we'll continue to execute. Again, it takes time to execute those sales, but we have more assets coming to market. We have some actively in the market right now, and we will just continue to execute the plan.

Okay. Great. And just a little one on the Just acquisition. I think you said 2/3 of the financing was coming from a facility. Can you sort of describe what that facility is? And how does that facility or the funding from that facility impact the economics for you and the accretion, if at all?

So Ken, I would just make a general comment, and this would apply to broadly most questions on Just that you may have on the call that this is a public to private transaction and it's subject to pretty strict U.K. takeover rules. So we are very limited in what we will and can say about the transaction at this stage. If you read the information contained in the public 2.7 [ announcement], that will give you extra detail on the [indiscernible] filed on a micro site that we can point you to, but we're limited in what we can say at this time about the transaction.

Next question comes from Mario Saric with Scotiabank.

Just one for me. And maybe coming back to the disclosed evolution of focus on the balance sheet on growing the insurance operations. With that in mind, are there any kind of longer-term kind of desired or implications for the corporate structure that you say, but perhaps you didn't envision 5 years ago when this initiative started, including perhaps desired ownership levels and other listed [indiscernible] vehicles.

Not as it pertains to those, Mario. Listen, I think Bruce said it in his remarks that when we started this company, we thought it would be a very attractive opportunity to deploy capital and would have synergies to broader Brookfield, but it would be a discrete investment. I think what we're seeing is the opportunity and the synergies are more significant and therefore, it's become more integrated into overall Brookfield.

And I think when we started this, we always had the intention to fund it on balance sheet. And what we're seeing in the business is just reaffirmed that expectation. This business will stay heavily integrated into Brookfield and that would be the approach. And I think the important 3 things to note as we scale the business is, one, it will be a tremendous engine for growth for BAM, who manages the capital; two, as pension markets open up this will be very powerful for broader Brookfield; and three, we just think it could be -- it is or it will be a more efficient capital structure and will allow us to enhance our returns on capital. So I think that's the key message.

And probably the last thing I would add and just to be very clear, like our single skill in Brookfield is investing people's capital, institutions, sovereigns individuals and making good risk-adjusted returns, and none of that is changing. This is just potentially a more efficient way to accelerate the scale and the returns of our business.

Our next question comes from Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

With respect to the dedicated AI infrastructure strategy that you're preparing to launch, can you give us some color on whether you expect to have cornerstone investors to support that launch? The way that you did with the inaugural transition strategy? And can you elaborate on how you will mitigate exposure to technological ops [indiscernible] risk inside the box?

Yes. Cherilyn, it's Nick. I think first of all, yes, I think that is something that we are working on when we launch these new strategies. It can be very appealing to some of our largest shareholders around the world, and this is obviously an asset class they're very focused on. So we are engaged with a number of our largest clients. And if things play out, it would be similar to how we launched the transition fund.

I think on your second question, that is sort of how that's through our engagement with the offtakers or who will be providing these services to we will be structuring these investments in a way where we can limit our downside risk and exposure and effectively providing capital to fund the build-out of the backbone of that infrastructure. So we'll come down to the structure and in terms of the capital we provide, but it will be done to meet the criteria of the risk-return profile of this capital, which will be similar to other funds that we've raised.

Great. And then just as a quick follow-up with respect to carried interest. Can you remind us which funds are currently recognizing carried interest and which are approaching that lockdown?

Yes. So the carry contribution this year has come from some Oaktree funds. And then we've been finishing off the carry really in the first global vintage of our funds, which would have been the first infrastructure fund, the first real estate fund, which is actually now tied up. It's finished. It's complete. It's delivered an excellent return of north of 20%. And so that fund is now done with the final 2 transactions this quarter.

And it would have been our fourth private equity fund, which is also largely done. Those would have been the contributors to date. The next funds, which will be significant contributors as we execute on currently signed and planned sales will be the next global infrastructure fund. So [indiscernible] and then working into BSREP 2, BSREP 3 and then the Oaktree opportunity funds coming short after that into 10 and 11.

Our next question comes from [ James William ] with National Bank.

Just in the Wealth Solutions business. Just wanted to get a little bit more color. It looks like spread at 1.8% came in a little lighter than the last couple of quarters by my calculations. Am I reading that right? And then maybe you can just sort of talk through some of the drivers of that slight step down.

Sure. And also welcome to the call. Thanks for joining. We were roughly at 1.8% last quarter. So it's broadly consistent with last quarter. I think when you look at the rounding, it's down slightly compared to last quarter. I'd say it's nothing really instructive in that. We are still seeing excellent deployment opportunities, and it's probably more just about the timing of the inflows versus the speed to deployment.

So when we look at the opportunity set for deployment, we're really seeing an excellent opportunity set and don't see any risk to the [ decide ] on that spread as we sit here today.

Great. And then on the real estate operating business, 2 questions here. First, cash distributions coming in a little now than previous quarters. What could be driving that? And then with the improved operating environment for real estate, do you have a sense as to the time line when operating FFO or NOI would begin to close the gap to those cash distributions?

Sure. So just on your first question, the cash distribution this quarter, the reduction is really just a product of the residential land and housing business, where last year, we had onetime income from lot sales that were not repeated this year. And we have seen a little bit of a slowdown in home sales. And I'd say the long-term outlook for the business remains strong and intact, really driven by the supply/demand fundamentals in housing but that reduction this quarter in the DE was really driven by [indiscernible] and housing business.

On your question about the operating offer flow for the business and the outlook, listen, I think the underlying fundamentals for the business are very strong. And so we had -- obviously, we had the impact from resi. I would tell you that the FFO this quarter also, if you look at it year-over-year, is impacted by the fact that we have sold assets. So that has an impact to income. And then we have the absence of some onetime events that were there last year.

These impacts were offset by lower rates, tightening credit spreads and the effects of the deleveraging we've undertaken in the business. And I think that deleveraging better capital markets, tighter spreads, but that's supported by the core NOI continuing to grow in the business is going to drive FFO growth over the next months and years.

And as we sign these new rents like just this week, we're poised to sign a rent in a building in that [indiscernible] $300 a square foot. It's $300 a square foot for a new lease were poised to sign in New York this week. And as those leases start to work their way through earnings as we burn off the rent freeze and they start to work their way through earnings. We have a tremendous tailwind for FFO coming from these assets.

So I think you have strong FFO coming from those assets. And while the FFO may take time to pick up, these leases are fully reflected into the valuation of the assets now as people do a long-term DCF on these assets. So I think you have that positive driver. And then I think on top of that, the increased pace of monetization is going to bring significant capital and cash flow back to the business.

I mean just if you think about the 3 transactions announced out of BSREP and our interest in those assets, that's going to be $500 million to $600 million of cash flow for the real estate business from 3 transactions alone. So I think the outlook for the liquidity, capital and FFO for the real estate business is very positive.

Our next question comes from Sohrab Movahedi with BMO Capital Markets. Sohrab, your line is now open.

And as there are no more questions, I will now turn it back to Ms. Katie Battaglia for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And with that, we'll end the call.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Mr. Chair, we are ready to commence the meeting.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's now 10:30 a.m. and time to begin the Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Brookfield Corporation. My name is Frank McKenna, and as Chair of the Board. It's my pleasure to chair today's meeting. On behalf of the Board and management, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone joining us through our live webcast.

Similar to our meeting last year, voting during the meeting will take place on our webcast platform. I will now explain that process. We will conduct the votes on the matters before us by a poll. The poll will be open for all resolutions at the same time and throughout the formal portion of the meeting. This will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or alternatively, wait until the conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you voted in advance of the meeting and do not wish to revoke your previously submitted proxies, no action is required.

We will welcome questions from our shareholders. As described in our Management Information Circular for the meeting, participants can submit questions by clicking on the messaging icon on the left side of the webcast and typing a question. Please indicate whether your question is of a general nature or alternatively, if it relates to a motion being considered as part of the meeting's formal business. Questions relating to a particular motion will be answered at the appropriate time in the meeting.

Note that we recommend that you submit questions relating to motions being tabled as soon as possible because there's a 30-second delay in the webcast. Now questions of a general nature will be answered during a question-and-answer period following the formal business of the meeting. Please click the submit button once you have finished typing your question. Our Corporate Secretary, who is serving as moderator of this meeting will read out the question and either a member of management or I will respond. If we receive similar questions, we will read one of them and note it to be one of a number of similar questions.

Now if you've connected to this meeting as a guest, you will not be able to submit a question. We will endeavor to answer all questions submitted during the allotted time.

Now moving on, we wish to thank you for your participation in today's meeting. I now call the meeting to order and would ask our transfer agent by its representatives [ Helen Kim ] and Kareeshma Aliar to act as scrutineers. I will also act our Corporate Secretary, Swati Mandava, to act as Secretary of today's meeting. In the unlikely event of technology issues disconnecting my audio, I have designated Swati to step in as Chair of the meeting.

It's now my pleasure to introduce the members of management with us today: Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; and Nicholas Goodman, our President and Chief Financial Officer. Following the conclusion of the formal part of the meeting, there will be a presentation from management.

Now as outlined in our circular, there are 6 items of business to be considered today: one, to receive the consolidated financial statements of the corporation for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, including the external auditor's report; secondly, to consider a special resolution authorizing an amendment to the articles of the corporation, increasing the number of directors from 14 to 16; third, to elect directors who will serve until the next AGM; fourth, to appoint the external auditor and authorize the directors to set its remuneration; fifth, to consider an advisory resolution on the corporation's approach to executive compensation; and sixth, to consider the shareholder proposal described in our circular.

Now as mentioned, in connection with business to be dealt with today, all voting will be conducted by online ballot through the live audio webcast platform. Voting is now open on all resolutions.

In order to expedite the formal part of today's meeting, I've asked certain shareholders to move and second various resolutions. Although the procedure will assist in the handling of the formal matters, it is not intended to discourage anyone from submitting questions in reference to any resolution after it has been proposed and seconded.

I'm advised that the notion calling the meeting and the circular were disseminated to voting shareholders in accordance with all applicable laws. I've asked the Corporate Secretary to keep a copy of the notice and proof of mailing with the minutes of this meeting. The minutes of last year's Annual Meeting of Shareholders held on June 7, 2024, are also available upon request should any shareholder wish to review them.

Based upon the scrutineers' preliminary report and attendance, the secretary has confirmed that there is a quorum. I therefore declare the meeting properly constituted for the transaction of the business for which it has been called.

Now turning to the first item of formal business. I will now table the corporation's 2024 annual report to shareholders, which includes the corporation's consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, together with the external auditor's report. Our annual report has been mailed to shareholders who requested it and is available in the meeting materials for this live webcast as well as on our website.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments submitted in connection with the financial statements.

Thank you, Swati. The second item of business today is the approval of a special resolution authorizing an amendment to the articles of the corporation, increasing the number of directors comprising the Board from 14 to 16. Now as described in our circular, the increase in the total number of directors will contribute to: one, ensuring that the Board is of an adequate size to fulfill its oversight and stewardship responsibility as the corporation continues to grow; two, enhancing the desired diversity of skills and experience among the directors; and three, further facilitating the Board's succession planning.

Mr. Chair, I move that the special resolution amending the articles to increase the number of directors comprising the Board from 14 to 16 as described in the Management Information Circular dated April 24, 2025, be approved.

Thank you, Thomas.

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

And thank you, Jasmine. The resolution has been moved and seconded, and the motion is now before the meeting for discussion.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments submitted in connection with the increase in the number of directors comprising the Board.

Adoption of this motion requires the favorable vote of 2/3 of the votes cast at the meeting by the holders of each of the Class A limited voting shares and the Class B limited voting shares voting as separate classes. Management has received proxies representing approximately 76% of the corporation's Class A limited voting shares and 100% of the Class B limited voting shares. These proxies direct me to vote over 98% of the Class A limited voting shares and all of the Class B limited voting shares in favor of the resolution.

I will now call for shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote if they have not already done so.

[Voting]

The third item of business at our meeting today is to elect directors who will serve until our next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. To assist you in identifying our directors, their photos will be shown on the slides of the webcast platform as I read their names. The 8 proposed nominees for election by holders of the corporation's Class A limited voting shares are: Elyse Allen, and Janice Fukakusa, Maureen Kempston Darkes, myself, Hutham Olayan, Satish Rai, Diana Taylor and Justin Beber.

The 8 nominees for election by the holders of the corporation's Class B limited voting shares are: Howard Marks, Rafael Miranda, Nord O'Donnell, Jeffrey Blidner, Jack Cockwell, Bruce Flatt, Brian Lawson, Samuel Pollock.

13 of the 16 director nominees were elected at our last annual meeting in June '24 and are standing for reelection today. Mr. Satish Rai, a current Director of the corporation, was appointed to the Board on March 17, St. Patrick's Day 2025 and is standing for election. Mr. Justin Beber and Mr. Samuel Pollock are not currently members of the Board and are also standing for election. Information on all 16 director nominees is set out in our circular, which was posted on our website for shareholder review and is available from the company upon request.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments with respect to the nomination of directors.

The meeting is now open to receive nominations for the election of the proposed directors. We invite shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote online if they have not already done so. As a reminder, if you've already voted or sent in your proxy, there is no need to do anything unless you wish to change your vote.

Mr. Chair, I nominate for election as directors the 8 nominees for the Class A limited voting shareholders and the 8 nominees for the Class B limited voting shareholders named in the Management Information Circular dated April 24, 2025.

Thank you, Jasmine.

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

And thank you, Thomas. Are there any further nominations? If not, I declare the nominations closed. As there are 16 directors to be elected and the same number of nominees, I now declare that those nominated have been duly elected as directors of the corporation.

The fourth item of business today is the appointment of the corporation's external auditor and authorizing the directors to set its remuneration. As stated in our circular, the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors has recommended to shareholders that Deloitte LLP be reappointed as the corporation's external auditor.

Mr. Chair, I move that Deloitte LLP be appointed as the external auditor of the corporation until the next annual meeting and that the directors be authorized to set its remuneration.

Thank you, Thomas.

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

And thank you, Jasmine. The resolution has been moved and seconded, and the motion is now before the meeting for discussion.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments submitted in connection with the appointment of auditors.

Adoption of this motion requires the favorable vote of a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by the holders of each of the Class A limited voting shares and the Class B limited voting shares voting as separate classes. Management has received proxies representing about 76% of the corporation's Class A limited voting shares and 100% of the Class B limited voting shares. These proxies direct me to vote over 90% of the Class A limited voting shares and all of the Class B limited voting shares in favor of the resolution.

I will now call for shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote if they have not already done so.

[Voting]

The fifth item of business today is the approval of the advisory resolution on the corporation's approach to executive compensation described in our circular. The corporation has put forth an advisory resolution at this meeting as part of its ongoing efforts to both meet its corporate governance objectives and ensure a high level of shareholder engagement. Because this is an advisory vote, the results will not be binding on the Board. However, the Board, Management Resources and Compensation Committee will take into account the results of the vote as appropriate when considering future compensation policies and decisions. The Board welcomes comments and questions on the corporation's executive compensation practices.

Mr. Chair, I move that the advisory resolution accepting the approach to executive compensation described in the Management Information Circular dated April 24, 2025, be approved.

Thank you, Jasmine.

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Thank you, Thomas. The resolution has been moved and seconded, and the motion is now before the meeting for discussion.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments in connection with the corporation's approach to executive compensation.

Now adoption of this motion requires the favorable vote of a majority of the Class A limited voting shares. Management has received proxies representing approximately 76% of the corporation's Class A limited voting shares. These proxies direct me to vote over 95% of the Class A limited voting shares in favor of the resolution.

I will now call for shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote if they've not already done so.

[Voting]

The sixth and final item of business today is the consideration of a shareholder proposal. The proposal and the corporation's response to the proposal are set forth in greater detail on Pages 80 to 82 of our circular. The shareholder proposal was submitted by Salal Foundation and Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health.

At this time, can I have a motion in respect to the shareholder proposal?

Mr. Chair, the shareholder proposal submitted by Salal Foundation and Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health as described in detail on Pages 80 to 82 of our Management Information Circular dated April 24, 2025, is hereby approved.

Thank you, Thomas.

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Thank you, Jasmine. The resolution has been moved and seconded. The motion is now before the meeting for discussion.

As set out in our circular, Brookfield is one of the world's largest private fund transition investing franchises with our transition strategy aiming to scale clean energy and sustainable solutions and transform carbon-intensive businesses setting targets aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Shareholders can find our detailed response to the proposal on Pages 81 and 82 of our circular. Our transition strategy has developed a transparent and disciplined approach to managing and measuring our positive impact contributions through its Impact Measurements and Management framework called the IMM.

The IMM is designed expressly for the transition strategy and applies only to investments within that strategy, given its unique mandate to achieve both appropriate risk-adjusted returns and measurable climate impact. The IMM framework is aligned with the operating principles for impact management document, a recognized climate reporting impact management framework. Our IMM framework helps to drive positive outcomes as well as ensuring transparency and accountability of impact goals and performance. Our IMM has been externally recognized as best-in-class and in our view, exceeds all credible requirements.

Looking beyond our transition strategy to our other operationally managed assets, we have developed a decarbonization framework adhering to internationally recognized frameworks. These assets include applicable investments within our infrastructure investment strategies, which, like many others, have recognized natural gas as a transition fuel. Across these investments, which includes prioritizing our highest emitting assets, we work with our portfolio companies to identify operational value enhancement and decarbonization opportunities so that the companies may work towards alignment with their decarbonization framework.

In doing so, we're supporting our portfolio companies in maximizing their value while also achieving their decarbonization potential. This contributes to a future lower emissions economy while delivering strong risk-adjusted returns for our investors. We've transparently provided disclosure of our greenhouse gas emissions in our annual sustainability report, and we're committed to increasing transparency and coverage of our disclosure as data becomes more available and reliable. To that end, the proposal misapprehends the purpose and application of the IMM, which is neither designed nor suitable for assets under management outside of our transition strategy for which we provide significant disclosure under our decarbonization framework.

Again, I direct your attention to Pages 81 to 82 of our circular, which describes in detail the position of management and Board on the matter.

Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments from others in connection with the shareholder proposal.

Adoption of this motion requires the favorable vote of a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by the holders of each of the Class A limited voting shares and the Class B limited voting shares voting as separate classes. Management has received proxies representing about 76% of the corporation's Class A limited voting shares and 100% of the Class B limited voting shares. These proxies direct me to vote over 92% of the Class A limited voting shares and all of the Class B limited voting shares against the proposal.

I will now call for shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote if they have not already done so.

[Voting]

Voting is now closed on all resolutions. I'm advised that our Corporate Secretary has the results of the vote based on the final tabulations of proxy votes received.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the approval of the special resolution authorizing an amendment to the articles of the corporation to increase the number of directors from 14 to 16, I declare the motion carried.

I'm pleased to report as there are 16 directors to be elected and the same number of nominees, I now declare that those nominated have been duly elected as directors of the corporation.

On the appointment of the corporation's external auditor and authorization of directors to set their remuneration, I declare the motion carried.

On the approval of the advisory resolution on the corporation's approach to executive compensation, I declare the motion carried.

On the approval of the shareholder proposal, I declare the motion is not carried and the shareholder proposal has not passed.

The final voting results will be available after the meeting and posted to SEDAR+ and the website.

Ladies and gentlemen, that completes the formal business of today's meeting. There being no other business, I declare the meeting terminated.

Now that the formal meeting has concluded, Nick Goodman will be leading a presentation on behalf of our management team. At the end of that presentation, we will be available to respond to any questions or comments that have been submitted.

Now please note that in responding to questions and in talking about our new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, you are encouraged to review the Business Environment and Risk section of the MD&A in our annual report. Finally, we would like to ensure that all shareholders who are interested in asking a question have the opportunity to do so. We'll make every effort on our part to address questions during the allotted question-and-answer period.

With that, I invite Nick Goodman to commence management's presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'm going to provide an overview of our financial performance over the last 12 months, highlighting the significant progress we have made with regards to delivering on our key strategic objectives, and I will then spend some time reviewing our outlook for the business.

But first, I want to start with an overview of the business today. One of our greatest strengths is our large base of permanent capital, which at $170 billion is one of the largest pools of discretionary capital globally. The capital is invested across our 3 core businesses being Asset Management, Wealth Solutions and our operating businesses. Each of these businesses has been carefully and methodically scaled over time, each benefiting from: one, our large capital base and centralized approach to capital allocation; and two, the broader Brookfield ecosystem. This capital base provides us with significant flexibility and is one of our key competitive advantages.

Brookfield Corporation today sits at the center of global capital flows and captures all the value creation generated across the franchise. As we continue to scale, invest and allocate capital across our core businesses, we are uniquely positioned to further capture and compound value for our shareholders over the long term. Our Asset Management business is diversified across strategies, geographies and fundraising channels, which has allowed us to consistently raise capital and grow fee-related earnings across market cycles. Our strong positioning around the fastest-growing sectors supported by long-term tailwinds continues to drive meaningful growth across our business.

Our Wealth Solutions business has grown to become a leading provider of retirement services and wealth protection products built entirely with permanent capital from our balance sheet. Our capital is perpetual and fully aligned with our policyholders, which allows us to make decisions with a singular focus on compounding value over time to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns.

Our operating businesses generate stable and resilient free cash flows. Each of these businesses is diversified across sectors and geographies and have largely contracted and regulated revenue streams that generate high cash margins. Today, our core businesses generate significant amounts of free cash flow and are supported by strong industry tailwinds and operating fundamentals. The reinvestment of these cash flows is centralized at the corporation, where we have a broad perspective on investment opportunities and can therefore, effectively allocate and reinvest capital to sustain and enhance long-term shareholder value. And all of this is underpinned by our conservative balance sheet and ample liquidity. Bringing all this together with our large scale and perpetual capital base, diversified business model, disciplined approach to capital allocation and strong financial position, we are set up to deliver 15% plus total returns on a per share basis over the long term.

Now let's turn to the past year. We had a very strong last 12 months with each of our underlying businesses performing well and continuing to execute on their strategic plans. We delivered approximately $7 billion of total distributable earnings, representing a 36% increase from a year ago, demonstrating the continued growth of our franchise. Our Asset Management business benefited from strong fundraising momentum with more than $140 billion of capital raised. We continue to see strong demand for our private fund strategies, which have a leading position in the sectors driving long-term structural change.

Our Wealth Solutions business grew its asset base to $133 billion from a standing start just 5 years ago. The business continues to scale, benefiting from growth in its insurance asset base and the strong performance of its investment portfolio.

Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable cash flows supported by the resilient and high-quality operating earnings. We also continue to have strong access to capital and remain committed to a conservatively capitalized balance sheet. And lastly, reflecting our commitment to drive long-term shareholder value, we returned more than $1.5 billion of capital to our shareholders, including over $1 billion from share buybacks, adding value to each remaining share.

Turning briefly to highlights from each of our businesses. Our asset management business delivered strong earnings growth. We continue to see fundraising momentum across our flagship funds and complementary strategies, contributing to the more than $140 billion of capital raised over the past 12 months. Notably, we completed the final close of our fifth vintage opportunistic real estate strategy, bringing total commitments to $16 billion. And with the final closes from clients in wealth and regional sleeves still ahead, the strategy is set to be our largest pool of capital ever raised for opportunistic real estate.

Fundraising helped drive fee-bearing capital to $549 billion, representing a 20% increase over the last 12 months, which contributed to a 16% growth in fee-related earnings, reaching a record $2.6 billion.

Our Wealth Solutions business continues to deliver strong financial performance, generating stable and growing long-dated cash flows. Distributable earnings increased by 74% to $1.5 billion over the last 12 months, driven by the growth of the insurance asset base from strategic acquisitions and strong investment performance resulting from the progress we have made in repositioning the investment portfolio. We originated $17 billion of annuity inflows over the past year, bringing our total insurance assets to $133 billion, demonstrating significant growth in a few short years.

Our strategy remains highly synergistic with the broader Brookfield ecosystem. Our goal is to operate with conservative leverage, source predictable liabilities and earn extra returns by drawing on our differentiated core competencies to invest in real asset credit and equity. This measured approach enables us to scale effectively while delivering 15% plus returns on our invested capital.

Our operating businesses continue to grow, generating resilient cash flows that compound in value. We generated $1.7 billion of distributable earnings from our operating businesses, which have a proven track record of delivering strong risk-adjusted returns. Cash distributions from our renewable power and transition, infrastructure and private equity businesses were supported by their strong operating earnings and underlying fundamentals. Our real estate business continues to benefit from strong demand for high-quality assets, which contributed to high occupancy and strong rental growth across the portfolio. Specifically in our core portfolio, we delivered 3% growth in same-store net operating income and occupancy levels remain high at 95%.

As highlighted, the strong performance of our business has allowed our cash flows to scale over time, annualized distributable earnings today are $3.40 per share, representing a 17% compound annual growth rate from $1.57 per share 5 years ago. As and when we see a disconnect between the price and our view of the value of our business, we have and will continue to allocate capital to share buybacks. During the year, we returned more than $1.5 billion of capital to shareholders with $1 billion -- over $1 billion being returned by way of share buybacks, a record for a 12-month period.

We continue to maintain excellent access to capital and a conservatively capitalized balance sheet. In 2024, we completed $135 billion in financings across our business, leveraging our deep relationships and demonstrating our strong access to capital. Today, we have a record $165 billion of deployable capital, which includes $5.5 billion of core liquidity at the corporation, and we continue to operate with a conservative balance sheet and the corporation remains to be rated A- or better. With our significant liquidity and access to capital, our franchise is well positioned to invest for value and execute on scale opportunities to create long-term value for our shareholders across all market cycles.

Now that we've summarized the past year, let's look forward. We are well positioned to grow our earnings on a per share basis by 20% plus annually over the next 5 years. And by doing so, we expect to generate significant free cash flow over the next 5 years. If we achieve the base plan before the positive impact of capital allocation, distributable earnings or DE will grow by 21% annually over the next 5 years. This would take our distributable earnings from $3.20 per share to $8.43 per share by 2029, in line with the plans that we laid out for you at our Investor Day in September of last year.

The increase in distributable earnings over the next 5 years is driven by growth across each of our core businesses. Our Asset Management business is well positioned to grow fee-bearing capital to over $1 trillion by scaling flagship strategies, expanding complementary products, deepening our credit offerings and broadening our distribution channels. Our Wealth Solutions business has a credible path to reaching approximately $300 billion in insurance assets as we continue to expand our product offerings, access new distribution channels, including larger bank platforms. We are also in the beginning stages of our international expansion, and we were recently granted a license to operate in the U.K., the first to be granted since 2007, where we plan to bring our track record of servicing policyholders.

Carried interest is our hidden gem and that is often overlooked. As we execute our monetization plans across the franchise and return capital to investors, we will recognize substantial carried interest into earnings over the next few years, which turns into real cash for the corporation. And lastly, by generating stable and increasing cash flows across market cycles, our operating business will continue to grow and compound in value. If we are successful, we will generate $47 billion of free cash flow from our existing businesses over the next 5 years. And we are focused on allocating and deploying our capital and this free cash flow wisely to maximize the net asset value of the company.

To optimize the impact of the reinvestment of our free cash flow, we have a very disciplined approach to capital allocation that has been created methodically and meticulously over many years. This approach has always been largely to largely distribute all free cash flow from our operating companies to the corporation. Our role is then to effectively allocate and reinvest that capital across our businesses. At the corporation, we have a uniquely broad perspective of the relevant investment opportunities and capital needs across our entire franchise. This allows us to reinvest with discipline and purpose, prioritizing areas where capital can generate the most attractive long-term risk-adjusted returns. This deliberate approach to capital allocation has been a key contributor to our ability to scale our business and to withstand economic cycles across the sectors in which we invest. This flexibility is one of our greatest strengths.

Some of the key focus areas for our capital include investing into and alongside our Asset Management business, which includes commitments to our private funds that have a proven track record of delivering excellent risk-adjusted returns, supporting the continued scaling of our Wealth Solutions business by reinvesting excess cash flows and strategically providing the business with growth capital. Investing alongside our operating businesses in large transactions to increase returns and provide significant strategic value to the Brookfield ecosystem, recycling capital from our real estate businesses and opportunistically allocating capital to share buybacks, especially when our shares trade at a significant discount to our view of intrinsic value. And all of this is done while retaining sufficient liquidity to protect against downside risks and preserve financial flexibility.

To that end, capital allocation should contribute meaningfully to our growth in distributable earnings per share, adding roughly $1.34 of earnings over the next 5 years, increasing compound annual growth in earnings to 25%.

In summary, we are focused on supporting the growth of each of our businesses by optimizing synergies across the Brookfield ecosystem to drive enterprise-wide value creation, centralizing cash flow reinvestment and capital allocation decisions to further enhance returns, deploying capital on a value basis and delivering sustained returns to our investors, maintaining a conservative balance sheet and strong liquidity; and finally, positioning our business to deliver 15% plus total returns on a per share basis over the long term.

Thank you all for your time. That concludes our presentation, and I would now be pleased to answer any questions.

Mr. Chair, there are no questions to address.

Thank you, Swati. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today. I hope you found the meeting and management presentation informative. We truly appreciate your participation.