Brookfield Corporation plans to sell more assets as global commercial real estate investment transaction activity increases.

CEO Bruce Flatt anticipates that Toronto-based Brookfield’s divestment activity will accelerate now that inflation is cooling, short-term interest rates are starting to decline in major economies around the world and investors are showing renewed appetite for risk.

“With this constructive economic backdrop, albeit volatile over the last week, liquidity continues to return to the private markets, setting us up well to capitalize on attractive growth opportunities, monetize mature assets and deliver strong returns,” said Flatt during a quarterly conference call with analysts.

As for the volatility, Flatt was referring to recent sharp declines in tech stock prices. Connor Teskey, head of Brookfield Asset Management and Brookfield’s renewable power business, said public markets have overreacted to bad economic data.

“The last 10 days have seen quite a bit of volatility,” he said. “I don’t think that can be understated. But we would very much be of the view that the market backdrop is still very increasingly constructive for transactions, particularly in the segments that we operate.”

Teskey pointed to above-normalized growth, robust labour markets, tightening credit spreads and falling central bank interest rates as examples of constructive economic underpinnings.

Brookfield expects divestments to accelerate because the company has made more investments recently, he added.

“We’ve been very active on the investment side for the last 12 to 18 months even through some of the market uncertainty of 2023,” he said. “And, we think those investment decisions are going to age very well. And while we do expect transaction activity to accelerate from here, it is coming off a pretty active base level.

“The difference on monetizations [i.e. divestments] is: We also expect monetization activity to increase from here. But it’s coming off a much, much lower base. And we’ve been, I would say, selective in terms of our monetizations within different asset classes for the last six to 12 months. But increasingly, we are seeing robust bids for high quality de-risked assets in core markets. And therefore, we’re expecting to see an increase in activity that will probably be greater on a relative basis on the monetization side, just because we’re coming off a lower base level.”

Flatt officially confirmed in a letter to shareholders that Teskey will succeed him as Brookfield Corporation’s top executive at some point in the future. /Flatt had previously stated publicly that Teskey would become CEO at a yet-to-be-determined appropriate time.