THE WORLD IS FLATT’S

WHEN IT COMES TO GLOBAL DIVERSIFICATION AND GROWTH, BROOKFIELD’S COLLECTION OF REAL ASSETS IS UNRIVALED. IN REAL ESTATE, BROOKFIELD OWNS ENTIRE SKYLINES IN CITIES LIKE TORONTO, SYDNEY AND BERLIN, PLUS MALLS, APARTMENTS AND SELF-STORAGE. BUT INFRASTRUCTURE AND RENEWABLE ENERGY COULD BECOME EVEN BIGGER. GLOBALLY, THE COMPANY ALREADY HAS 36 PORTS, 218 HYDROELECTRIC PLANTS, THOUSANDS OF KILOMETERS OF PIPELINES AND RAIL NETWORKS, PLUS CELL TOWERS, WIND FARMS AND TOLL ROADS.

IF FLATT IS TRYING to cultivate the Buffett comparisons, his Toronto digs certainly encourage it. Modest home? He lives in a two-story brick townhouse barely set back from the sidewalk. Humble office? A drab gray cubicle, positioned against a window looking onto a courtyard of an office complex that Brookfield owns. Contrarian outlook? The only piece of art visible from Flatt’s desk is a framed cartoon depicting a herd of white sheep moving toward a cliff as a single black sheep heads in the opposite direction.

His break came early. His father was an executive at a mutual fund company in Manitoba, and Flatt, numerically inclined, joined an accounting firm in Toronto out of college.

In 1990, at 25, he was hired at Brascan, a conglomerate controlled by Peter and Edward Bronfman, two heirs to the Seagram fortune. He eventually rose to become vice president of its merchant bank and gained a seat in the engine room of one of Canada’s largest companies, with holdings like Labatt Beer, the Toronto Blue Jays and millions of acres of timber-

land. Then came trouble. Brascan’s interests were built by Peter Bronfman and a South African investor named Jack Cockwell, who financed its ambition through a web of intermingled corporate holdings. The structure faltered during the early 1990s downturn, and troubled Brascan was forced to sell its beer, baseball and forestry interests.

Flatt and a number of young partners—mostly accountants—began to rebuild Brascan. Its stock was deeply depressed, and by the mid-1990s Bronfman had stepped aside, selling his shares to a partnership that distributed stock to the company’s upper ranks. For Flatt, it was a billion-dollar opportunity: By borrowing, he was ultimately able to gain control of a large number of shares with a chance for immense wealth if he and his partners could devise a better strategy.

Having seen the hazards of corporate overreach, Flatt forged an investing style to capitalize on the miscalculations of others. “We were young in our careers and watched very difficult markets in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” he says. “That was quite impressionable on us to how we run the business today—never put yourself in a situation where you have to sell something in an environment where you should be buying.”

The opportunity came quickly. Another humbled Canadian giant, Olympia & York, filed for bankruptcy in 1992 after heavy losses in developing London’s Canary Wharf. Flatt scooped up O&Y senior debt and organized a plan with creditors, including Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, beating out Apollo and Tishman Speyer. When the dust settled, Flatt controlled the World Financial Center—and a block on the West Side of Manhattan that he would sit on. Flatt listed the real estate trove on public markets in 1997 under the name Brookfield Properties. He then proceeded to buy out his minority partners. The stock quickly soared, reviving parent Brascan.

History repeated ahead of the next downturn. On 9/11, Flatt sprang into action, first reassuring investors that the World Financial Center had been mangled but not toppled. Then he hopped in a limousine and traveled from Toronto to Lower Manhattan to check on his workers and buildings. Alongside executives like John Zuccotti, a former deputy mayor of New York, Flatt and his team organized a monthslong cleanup. When the crisis passed, he was anointed CEO by Brascan’s partnership, capping a dramatic ascent for the 36-year-old.

Once in charge, Flatt streamlined Brascan’s sprawling operations into three lines: real estate, renewable energy and infrastructure. On top of these divisions would sit an assetmanagement unit to invest outside funds—including coinvestments from sovereign wealth funds—designed to generate fees and have capital ready for market dislocations.

And those dislocations kept coming. After the Enron debacle, for example, Flatt’s renewable-energy business acquired hundreds of hydroelectric plants. By 2005, Flatt decided to rebrand the whole Brascan operation under the Brookfield name.

On the eve Of the financial crisis in 2007, hundreds of skeptical investors gathered at the New-york Historical Society for a one-day conference on the fragile state of the global economy. Pollyannaish Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg warned that a severe recession was imminent. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman railed against a new Wall Street creation called CDOS, which he predicted would soon implode. But when the young chief executive of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management got up to speak, he turned the topic to infrastructure—a $35 trillion opportunity hiding in plain sight.

Forget the gloom. Pipelines, wireless towers, power generation, ports and toll roads—the backbone of the global economy—would soon become the holy grail investment product for trillions of dollars stagnating in pension funds and savings. “David [Rosenberg’s] presentation is probably about the next six months,” Flatt told the doomsday-obsessed audience. “Mine is more relevant to the next 25 to 60 years.”

Recession or not, this market could be bigger than real estate—and Flatt was ready once again to exercise his penchant for buying during desperate times, only now on a massive scale.

First up: Australian construction and real estate giant Multiplex, on the verge of collapse after massive cost overruns in building London’s Wembley Stadium. Brookfield acquired it for a bargain $3.8 billion, gaining a global construction business, $6.6 billion in real estate and an operating toehold in Australia. Next, in 2009, Brookfield spent $1.1 billion acquiring a major stake in the bankrupt infrastructure giant Babcock & Brown, control of Britain’s third-largest port operator and a 50% interest in the world’s largest coalexport terminal in Queensland, Australia, adding $8 billion in infrastructure assets.

A year later, Brookfield, in partnership with Ackman, led the recapitalization of bankrupt mall operator General

pipelines, wireless towers, power plants, ports and toll roads will be a holy grail investment product for trillions stagnating in pension funds.