Brookfield Asset Management has received approval from India’s competition watchdog to acquire certain entities of the Oaktree group, marking a significant move in the global alternative investment space.
The Competition Commission of India said Brookfield Asset Management is acquiring units of Oaktree Capital Group Holdings and Oaktree Equity Plan.
Brookfield Asset Management, which has an AUM of about $1 trillion globally, has interests across infrastructure, renewable energy, real estate, private equity and credit.
Meanwhile, Oaktree has built a presence in India through private credit investments; a fund management unit in GIFT City, the country’s international financial services hub; and offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
In a recent interview to DealStreetAsia, Ankur Gupta, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Head of Asia Pacific and Middle East, Real Estate, at Brookfield’s Real Estate Group said there’s a lot that can be done in India’s infrastructure, realty, energy sectors.
In India, private capital participation in infrastructure is rising through infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs), a REIT-like structure that allows investors to own stakes in operational assets such as toll roads, transmission lines, pipelines and telecom towers.
Brookfield began investing in India roughly a decade ago and has since scaled to somewhere in the region of $30-32 billion in asset.
Its investments in the country include Ecoworld, a 7.7 million sq ft asset in Bengaluru that it acquired for roughly $1.5 billion; and renewable energy provider CleanMax, among others.
