Bullish on India, expect bigger gains in long run: Bruce Flatt

Mumbai: Brookfield Asset Management believes India is an "incredible place" for investment and regulatory hurdles that global investors confront in the country are not unique.

"One should not think that India is the only one that has some regulatory issues. In the US or Canada or the UK, or other places, we have similar issues while getting approvals," Flatt said. "We tend to think we are among the highest quality of investors. And we're patient investors for long periods of time and I think that if one operates in a good fashion, India will be a great place to invest," Brookfield Asset Management chief executive Bruce Flatt told ET in an exclusive interview.

The Canadian alternative investor will continue to be aggressive in its India bets as it sees larger returns in the long run from one of the world's fastest-growing major economies.


'US Treasury Purchases may Go Up'
"I believe there are some great opportunities now. Many believe returns will be higher in the longer term than you would have otherwise found, because you're taking businesses private, or otherwise at lower multiples," Flatt said.

Brookfield has already deployed $20 billion in Indian companies.

Brookfield, which has a huge office portfolio in India, sees global CEOs having no plans of running a workforce from remote locations over a long period of time. "With Covid-19 waning around the world, reoccupation of offices continues to increase almost every week. The more important thing, when we're talking to them (CEOs) is it's possible they'll give more flexibility. It's possible they'll operate their offices or build out offices a little bit differently. But the bottom line is most things are going back to what they were before," Flatt said.

On the Ukraine invasion and its related impact on the economy, Flatt said these events cause uncertainty in the markets, and people may want to invest in securities associated with more certainty. "So you're going to see more purchases of US treasuries, more purchases of things that are in that direction with less risk. But, I see whether it's a pandemic, a war, economic collapse... that are shocks to the world, we get through and we always do," he said.