There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Brookfield Asset Management, unless you’ve visited Lower Manhattan over the last few years and strolled around its flagship shopping centre.
However, its low profile has not prevented the Canadian business from acquiring some 400 million square feet of commercial space or outperforming other multinational real estate investment companies on almost any financial metric that counts. It has the largest assets ($196 billion), highest sales ($47.6 billion), third-highest income ($2.3 billion) and third-highest market cap ($38.9 billion) over the past year among publicly owned real estate shareholders.
These results make Brookfield not only the world’s largest real estate investment firm, but also the top-ranking of only three Canadian companies on the Forbes Global 2000 list for 2018.
The Global 2000 is Forbes’ annual ranking of the largest and most powerful public companies in the world, and is based on four equally weighted metrics: revenue, gains, assets and market value. The list includes companies from 60 countries. These businesses together generated $39.1 trillion in revenue and $3.2 trillion in income in the last 12 months. They have $189 trillion in total assets and a combined market value of $56.8 trillion.
Naturally, real estate investors are judged not only on how much they receive but also on the reach and nature of the properties they own. Brookfield owns a lot from offices in South Korea to student accommodation in London. As Antoine Gara explained last year in a cover story for Forbes about CEO Bruce Flatt, Brookfield secretly controls whole city skylines in cities such as Toronto and Sydney. It is London’s biggest office landlord and the same goes for the LA city centre. It owns Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and in London it owns Canary Wharf – two of Europe’s largest real estate projects! It has 14,200 hotel rooms, including Atlantis in the Bahamas and in the Florida the Diplomat, and scores of shopping malls courtesy of divisions such as Rouse Properties and General Growth, and several high-end shopping centers in Brazil.
In total, this year, 38 real estate investors made the Global 2000 list — not including companies like Blackstone, the private equity giant with a large portfolio of properties but still investing in other forms of assets. Such companies include diversified players such as Brookfield (which invests in infrastructure and green energy in addition to a variety of real estate assets), as well as more focused owners such as cell tower giant American Tower Corporation, Mall owner Simon Property Group and warehouse leader Prologis.
Twenty-three of the world’s 38 largest real estate firms, including four of the top five, come from the US. Five of the remaining companies come from Australia, with France and the UK making up much of the remainder of the list.
1. Brookfield Asset Management | Canada
Owned real estate: diversified
Sales: $47.59 billion
Gains: $2.34 billion
Assets: $195.94 billion
Market worth: $38.91 billion
2. American Tower Corporation| United States
Owned real estate: cell towers
Sales: $6.89 billion
Gains: $1.21 billion
Assets: $34.36 billion
Market worth: $61.33 billion
3. Simon Property Group | United States
Owned real estate: retail
Sales: $5.57 billion
Gains: $1.95 billion
Assets: $31.02 billion
Market worth: $49.52 billion
4. Annaly Capital Management | United States
Owned real estate: debt & equity portfolios
Sales: $2.66 billion
Gains: $2.46 billion
Assets: $100.38 billion
Market worth: $12.07 billion
5. Prologis | United States
Owned real estate: warehouses
Sales: $2.68 billion
Gains: $1.81 billion
Assets: $29.67 billion
Market worth: $34.84 billion
6. Link REIT | Hong Kong
Owned real estate: retail
Sales: $1.23 billion
Gains: $3.07 billion
Assets: $24.56 billion
Market worth: $18.53 billion
7. Weyerhaeuser | United States
Owned real estate: timberlands
Sales: $7.38 billion
Gains: $694 million
Assets: $17.89 billion
Market worth: $27.72 billion
8. Gecina | France
Owned real estate: residential & office
Sales: $799 million
Gains: $1.14 billion
Assets: $24.14 billion
Market worth: $12.77 billion
9. Klepierre | France
Owned real estate: retail
Sales: $1.58 billion
Gains: $1.39 billion
Assets: $30.20 billion
Market worth: $12.39 billion
10. Westfield | Australia
Owned real estate: retail
Sales: $1.41 billion
Gains: $1.55 billion
Assets: $21.25 billion
Market worth: $14.24 billion
11. Public Storage | United States
Owned real estate: self-storage
Sales: $2.69 billion
Gains: $1.44 billion
Assets: $10.69 billion
Market worth: $36.87 billion
12. AvalonBay Communities | United States
Owned real estate: residential
Sales: $2.19 billion
Gains: $780 million
Assets: $18.65 billion
Market worth: $23.00 billion
13. General Growth Properties* | United States
Owned real estate: retail
Sales: $2.35 billion
Gains: $614 million
Assets: $23.26 billion
Market worth: $19.78 billion
*Brookfield’s commercial real estate division has agreed to acquire GGP, the deal is expected to close later this year.
14. Ventas | United States
Owned real estate: healthcare
Sales: $3.63 billion
Gains: $563 million
Assets: $23.49 billion
Market worth: $19.07 billion
15. Boston Properties | United States
Owned real estate: office
Sales: $2.63 billion
Gains: $541 million
Assets: $19.58 billion
Market worth: $19.20 billion
