Brookfield Asset Management – The Perfect Predator

Good profile in Business without Borders on Canada’s own Brookfield Asset Management and its CEO, Bruce Flatt.

http://www.bwob.ca/industries/real-estate-industries/a-perfect-predator/

This focus on workmanlike deal-making makes Brookfield very much au courant. After two decades of celebrating brash mavericks and gamblers—dot-com dreamers, M&A tacticians, credit-addled empire builders—the zeitgeist, post-meltdown, has shifted toward those who play it safe. And Brookfield, a company run largely by accountants, was dull before dull was cool. Besides, the low profile is intentional, a kind of camouflage. The company’s fundamental strategy—buying expensive properties on the cheap—relies, after all, on others blowing their brains out by taking fliers, so it can come in to clean up the mess and cart off choice pieces from the carnage. Brookfield, in fact, is the quintessential example of what French social scientists Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot identified in a 2009 study as a key strategy of iconic companies: eschewing risk and stealthily positioning yourself to spot vulnerability in rivals, then pouncing when the moment is right.