CIBC hosts James Wright and Ines Serrao welcome Hadley Peer Marshall, CFO of Brookfield Asset Management to discuss the rapid growth of renewables and nuclear, Brookfield’s approach to investing across the energy value chain, and trends in private credit and M&A. The episode also shares insights on navigating geopolitical risks and the importance of long-term thinking in infrastructure.
Intro: Welcome to The Energy Shift, a podcast series focusing on the rapidly evolving energy landscape with hosts Ines Serrao and James Wright.
James Wright: Hey, good morning, Ines. I believe technically this is our first podcast of spring and typical for Chicago where I am today, temperatures have plummeted. So I'm not quite packing away the down jackets yet. How's it with you?
Ines Serrao: Hey James, I will say the weather is getting better here in New York. I'm very excited about that.
James Wright: Yeah, summer is not far away. Excellent. So I am really excited about today's episode and it couldn't have come at a more opportune time. It feels like investment in power, energy in the broader sense, including all the energy adjacent infra isn't abating, particularly here in the US. And on the pod in recent months, you and I have talked about many asset classes and technologies within those broad sector buckets, but sometimes it's not easy to tie it all together. So I think you and I have found the perfect guest today to help us try.
Ines Serrao: Yes, James, I fully agree. In today's market, infrastructure investing is a concept covering a lot of thematics. So to help us think about it holistically, we're very lucky to be joined today by one of the titans of our industry, Hadley Peer Marshall, the CFO of Brookfield Asset Management. Hadley oversees over a trillion dollars in AUM across a wide array of industries, including Brookfield's significant investments in many US power, energy, digital, and infra assets. I'm really looking forward to her views on the market and how Brookfield thinks about asset allocation choices within it, but also her own story, helping lead one of the world's leading asset managers. So Hadley, it's great to have you on. Could you kick us off by introducing yourself and giving us a quick summary of your career path to date?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Sure. Well first, thank you for having me. I'm very hopeful in the spring concept and as that you just mentioned because it's raining where I am in New York City, but I take your word for it. I am the CFO as you mentioned of Brookfield Asset Management and I'm also a member of our infrastructure group and co-head our infrastructure credit strategies. Prior to joining Brookfield about 10 years ago, I was in banking and working closely with you and James and so it was a very long career in banking before shifting over to Brookfield.
James Wright: That is an impressive resume, Hadley, thank you. I hope my high score is taking notes. So this is The Energy Shift podcast. So let's start maybe at the macro level with energy. So what's BAM's long-term thesis on US energy as an asset class, particularly power? Are you bullish on what's kind of driving that fuel?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's been kind of crazy to watch because for years and years, I we've all witnessed this, very limited growth, you know, very stagnant, 1 to 2%. And then if you look at on a global basis, significant increase. I think projections out there are that we're going to have almost 4,600 gigawatts of renewable power capacity between now and 2030. So that's double deployment over the previous five years. And if you look at just the US as an example, that demand is growing 20 to 25 percent between now and 2030. So the fundamentals are very strong across all of the areas. And what we're seeing is a significant amount of need to build out. And this is a story that's going to trend for many, many years, because of all the themes that we're reading about in the papers and experiencing ourselves firsthand from the needs of the community, whether that's on the industrial side, whether it's electrification, EVs, data, AI, you name it. So it's a very interesting period of time.
Ines Serrao: Thanks, Hadley. That's very interesting. We agree and we are working very deeply on the same growth. So it's exciting for us too. As we work closely with Brookfields and many of your portfolio companies, we're very lucky to be close to many of them and great teams over there. We talk to them quite often. It seems that you take an any and all approach to energy investment across the value chain, particularly here in the US. Is that oversimplistic or is there a strategic bend to certain technologies like renewables?
Hadley Peer Marshall: That is absolutely true. I mean, we look across all the different types of technologies and that's what it's going to require. And so as an example, we have our energy group that focuses on the production side. So think about renewables plus batteries, nuclear, renewable natural gas, potentially hydrogen. And then we have for years as well been investing in the midstream side. So think about demand side pipelines, LNG terminals, storage, transmission, residential infrastructure. So we have looked at both sides from that angle and have really built up strong businesses across our infrastructure and our energy group for decades and decades. And as you pointed out, I mean, it is going to take a multi-pronged approach to fulfill the needs of the demand that we're seeing that we just talked about a second ago.
James Wright: Yeah, that's super interesting. I guess following on from that Hadley, I mean, as you, as we kind of think about what you just said on a sort of kind of temporal spectrum, is that thesis bifurcated short versus medium and long term? So for example, are you more bullish on traditional thermal power in the short term, but still seeing the longer term thesis for renewables and maybe nuclear as part of that mix going forward?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Yeah, that is a good way of thinking about it because if you think about today, the fastest way to generate production is through renewables. The fastest to deliver, the most cost effective. And when you pair it up with batteries, quite useful and a 24-7 focus. So there is a strong focus around renewables and that will continue to be at our core capabilities and really our competencies. But then as we grow and look out, as we were just talking about a second ago, I mean, it's going to require all technologies. And so nuclear is a big part of that. We own Westinghouse, which has entered into discussions with the U.S. government of an $80 billion revenue contract. I mean, that's a huge contract. So that shows you just the need for the U.S. specifically to think about the different technologies that will be required. And so we'll be playing the different angles given that we know how to build and develop these types of critical infrastructure to really address the demand that we're seeing in the market.
James Wright: Yeah, absolutely.
Ines Serrao: I'm personally very excited about the prospect of nuclear in the future. So we look forward to partnering with you on that, not to sign any deals on this podcast, but just putting it out there.
Hadley Peer Marshall: (laughs) We're excited to talk to you about it too. It's going to be really, I mean, this is just a transformation. And so it's quite exciting to be at that point.
Ines Serrao: Absolutely. Maybe shifting gears a bit to broader energy adjacent infrastructure. The new elephant in the room or newish, I should say, is data centers and AI. And you launched Brookfield's AI infrastructure fund, BAIF, I think you call it, last November with 100 billion to deploy. What's the investment thesis behind the fund? Is the focus on hard assets, software or a mix?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Well, it's really on infrastructure. So hard assets, when you think about from that perspective. And this fits within the broader infrastructure umbrella. But what we did was a little bit unique. And I've never seen another manager do this, but we took our capabilities on the real estate side, on our energy side, specifically delivering power, and our infrastructure, where we've been building data centers for years now. And we combined that into one holistic capability to deliver AI factories. And this is quite compelling because as you can imagine, in this environment, not only are we building out data centers, but sovereigns are very focused on building out their capabilities and having this mission critical enterprise. So we can not only provide the land, we can provide the power, and we can provide the box, the infrastructure, what's inside and outside. And so that's a unique proposition, all while being able to provide the scale of capital. So that's significant because the opportunity set is anywhere around seven trillion when you add it all up. And so for us to be able to come at that with large capital capabilities to deliver in a timely way, which is critical for sovereigns, I mean, it's quite powerful. And so the opportunity set is very large, as we've been seeing. It's only growing. And then to be able to deliver it in such a unique way that really does provide that essentiality. Because you can imagine building out not only the sovereign side of it, but behind the meter. So a good example of that is we invested in Bloom Energy, our first investment in the AI fund. And in that capacity, this is fuel cells. And it really is quite powerful when you marry it up to the needs of the data centers who are, know, as we both know, the three of us appreciate that what the bottleneck is, is power and to be able to connect. And so behind the meter is quite powerful right now in this environment. So it's exciting to launch this AI strategy. We've had our first close. We'll finish up the fundraising and we're already underway with the deployment. And I think we'll see, similar to what we saw when we launched our BGTF, which is our global transition strategy, a similar kind of construct where because of the immense amount of needs, this particular strategy will be able to address it and meet client needs as well.
James Wright: Yeah, I love that story, Hadley, thank you. because just hearing you say all that, it perfectly summarizes the themes that we spend the whole time talking about on this podcast around the convergence of power, data, digitization of everything and infra like altogether. That was a great example. thank you. I guess moving on to one of your other hats you mentioned at the top. So if we move on to the water private credit and we actually spent, Ines and I, some time a couple of weeks ago with Jess Thompson from Allianz on this topic. But having you join us today is a perfect follow on to that as outside of your ownership of many of those companies you talked about, BAM also has a sizable private credit business. Is that platform primarily targeting infrastructure as an asset class or is it more broadly focused on corporate credit as well?
Hadley Peer Marshall: It is timely. it feels like private credit is in every news article along with AI. We're hitting all the news plus the weather. So we've really conquered current events. But when we think about our credit business, we have been heavily focused on real assets. So real estate and infrastructure. So you're spot on right there. Asset-backed finance and opportunistic credit. And opportunistic credit fits nicely with Oak Tree, which we own and are buying the remaining stake that we don't currently own. And so those have been the three areas. It's less around corporate, to be honest. The direct lending side has not been an area of focus for us because when we look at the opportunity set, it's harder to get the terms and the pricing that we can see in other areas. And in the areas I mentioned, real assets, asset-backed finance, and opportunistic, our capital is quite valuable. And when you dive in further into infrastructure and you think about the themes we've been talking about, the need for power, the AI buildup, building the backbone of the AI framework from an infrastructure lens. These are really exciting trends and they heavily fit into what we're seeing on the equity side. And that's really been driven by the digitalization, the decarbonization and the deglobalization. So we've been able to match that on the credit side as well and be very active on the backs of those three themes where we have the sector expertise broadly given all that we do within infrastructure and energy. Of course, the operating capabilities, which has been our legacy and what defines us and makes us probably quite different than many of our peers. And then the ability to source opportunities above and beyond what you typically can see as a former banker myself. So it's been quite exciting to build up the infrastructure credit group over the past 10 years and to really follow the themes and be able to use a lot of the same components that we talking about with the AI fund, having scalable capital, being able to provide certainty and be a good partner. All those things translate to our credit business as well. And it allows us to see all the themes that are shifting in the market so that we can react as well.
James Wright: Yeah, absolutely.
Ines Serrao: Thanks, Hadley. Quick follow up here. In the US market, where do you see the low hanging fruit for the private credit business? Again, from our chair, it feels like data center and related adjacent infra spending must be an obvious one.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Yeah, and obviously we talked about renewables and power overall. But the one thing that we're seeing more and more of more recently is M&A. And that's quite interesting because acquisition financing seemed to be something of the past, if you think about 2025, but it's been much more active for us in 2026. You two have a stronger view of what's going on as things have been shifting in the environment. But that is something we're seeing. And what that M&A is bringing to the table is more diversification around the opportunity set. So more midstream, that's gotten a lot more focus recently. Transportation. And so we're seeing kind of all the different angles of what we focus on within our infrastructure business, that being obviously renewables, utilities, transportation, data, midstream, all of that seems to be playing forward in a more diverse sense than we had seen historically. So that's probably the one thing I would say on the low hanging fruit kind of trends we're experiencing right now.
Ines Serrao: That's very interesting and it's funny that you pointed out, I agree with you 100% that we've been spending much more time on acquisition financing recently than we have in the recent years. So good to know that you're seeing that.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Yeah, and one other thing that, you know, as we think about energy and it's the addition of, as well as the transition to, you know, the transition part will probably bring more opportunities as well.
James Wright: Yeah, I agree. And actually, Ines and I, are fresh back from Infocast in Arizona, Hadley and, you know, M&A was just a buzzword down there as well, to your point. I mean, people were talking a lot about M&A opportunities and definitely a pickup in the market. And we're seeing a lot of folks who really need to kind of fill gaps in pipelines. So it's definitely a hot topic, very timely. Okay, so as a self-confessed politics major, I feel as we draw the conversation to an end, it'd be remiss of me if we didn't spend just a minute on recent geopolitical events. you know, we're all seeing real time another example of how energy infrastructure ends up being at just the center of everything in one way or another. So, Hadley, how do you think about pricing that risk? You know, can you even price it? Or when you kind of boil it all down, is it really just more about kind of basic portfolio theory? How do you think about that with what's happening in the world at the moment?
Hadley Peer Marshall: It starts kind of from the beginning when we look to enter into a new jurisdiction. It takes us a very long time and we need to be comfortable that we can see a pipeline of opportunities, strong governing law, partnerships, et cetera. You know, India was a good example of that where it took us about 10 years to really get going before we started investing in size. And so you're hitting on a point that we always think about because we want to be in jurisdictions that we see and have confidence in the long-term political and economic cycles so that we can build the boots on the ground the operating platforms and make those investments and so, you know, in the jurisdictions where we focus you know, that is something that is important to us. And so when you see short-term economic situations or political situations, that doesn't impact us and how we think about our investing. And we've always got the long-term view, which incorporates pricing into that. The shift could be if we see a fundamental change. So we've been less active, as an example, in South America than previous years. And that's something that's been going for a period of time and probably will be going on for some time. But what we're seeing in the short term, which we all hope is short term, Given our long lasting relationships there, our experience, we've been, as an example, in the Middle East for 20 years, we're very confident in our investments we've made and are very focused on those geographies still. But it's something that you have to stay very focused on to make sure that you're getting the appropriate risk adjusted returns for every investment you're making, regardless of geography, but that is a component of it. And so you're right to think about does it have a pricing impact and does it have a focus from a geographic deployment perspective as well.
James Wright: Yeah, no, 100 % agree. And you know, I think the three of us all agree in our careers, we think about some of the, you know, the mega projects and infrastructure opportunities we've all worked on. I mean, they're always, you know, decades in the making. And, you know, they kind of transcend politics to some political cycles, to some respect, right? They just you have to think much longer term and infer. It's not about just who's the current person in power, the kind of administration, it's really the long term for sure. That's a point well made. Thank you.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Yeah. Especially when you think about the fundamental definition of infrastructure, it's long-term, predictable, essential, high-barriers entry, those components. So it does correspond.
Ines Serrao: To finish us off, I will say that personally, I'm very proud to have you on the podcast. So thank you. And you're one of the most senior female leaders in our industry. So why were there not more of you? And where is the industry still failing here?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Well, thank you. Every time I go to any event, any conference, it's very comforting to see the number of female attendees and females in the room and in the conversation. And so I feel like we've made a lot of progress in attracting more women to the industry. We have a lot more we need to do. And so I have a lot of hope but I do agree with you. It would be nice to have more at all levels. So it's a big focus of mine and I know yours as well. So we'll keep fighting for that.
Ines Serrao: We're doing our best. We'll keep pushing.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Exactly. Exactly.
James Wright: I agree, fully agree. All right, so now as we wrap it, here's the fun part, Hadley. Okay, so the three of us would quickly talk about something that shifted our weeks. Ines, go on, you start. You start us off.
Ines Serrao: Thank you. So I don't know if you guys know, but one of my main goals in life is to be a happy grandma. So think having all the family around, cooking for everybody, everybody takes leftovers home. And this weekend, I feel like I made really good progress into achieving that goal. So my mom's visiting and she was teaching me how to crochet over the weekend. I do not want negative comments about this. I'm going to get there and be a very good grandma and crocheting for everybody.
James Wright: That is amazing. love that. No judgment. That's awesome. Hadley, what about you?
Hadley Peer Marshall: Well, I have to go with the first day in our new office. So we have our headquarters in New York and we recently moved offices and today was the first day that we're in our new location. So we've had some technology hiccups, but all has worked well for this podcast. So that's been really exciting. But of course, you have to learn where the water is, where the restrooms are. We went up the wrong elevator bank, you know, things of that nature. So it's the twist and turns of a new office, but it's really nice. So I invite any of you to come see it. We’re really excited about it.
James Wright: Love it, we'll be down. Sounds great. Funny side note on that, when we moved into our new CIBC offices a couple of years ago, everyone got caught off guard because you needed your pass card to get in and out of the men's bathroom. So most people found they got locked in the men's bathroom and couldn't get out again. So anyway, hope you haven't got those issues.
Hadley Peer Marshall: No issues around that. No issues.
James Wright: All right, so I'll finish this off. I'll actually, I'll talk about something kind of more on the business level this week. So I actually, funny enough over a couple of days ago, I had my first experience driving or I guess being taken for a ride in a fully autonomous EV. And the technology really blew my mind, just how good it was. No traffic light, roundabout or jaywalkers seemed to throw this thing off. It was unbelievable. And then I actually saw some interesting reporting kind of linking it to global events a bit over the weekend on the surging market caps of the major Chinese battery manufacturers since the Iranian war started. And it really kind of got me thinking because, you in some respects, that's not surprising. And historically major events like this have really been instigators of energy policy shifts, either on the national or international level. So I think whilst we've all seen a bit of a domestic pullback over the last year or so on EV investing, I do think current world events have really shone a bright light on how susceptible we are to the whims of global oil markets. And particularly when we're through these midterms, it could be interesting to see what level of political push we have again for more electrification in the economy. And side note, if you haven't seen the latest announcements on the new fast charging technology that's coming out, it's truly game changing. Yeah, that got me thinking this week and pretty amazing the new EV self-driving stuff that's out there right now.
Ines Serrao: Are you talking about the Waymo in Arizona, James?
James Wright: No, actually, it wasn't a Waymo. It was a different vehicle. But yeah, well, you and I saw those driving all around Infocast, right? They were amazing. Yeah.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Well, energy security is top of mind, so that's good reminder.
James Wright: Indeed, So that's a wrap. Hadley, thank you so much. It's been great having you on. Really enjoyed the conversation and join us again soon on our next episode of The Energy Shift. Thank you.
Ines Serrao: Thank you, Hadley.
Hadley Peer Marshall: Thank you for having me.
Outro: Please join us next time on The Energy Shift as we continue to tackle some of the hottest topics in the US energy transition landscape, providing fresh insights and viewpoints to help you shift your perspective.
Disclaimer: The materials disclosed on this podcast are for informational purposes only and subject to our Code of Conduct as well as applicable IIROC and FINRA rules. The information and data contained herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable, without independent verification by CIBC Capital Markets and, to the extent that such information and data is based on sources outside CIBC Capital Markets, we do not represent or warrant that any such information or data is accurate, adequate or complete. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, CIBC World Markets Corp (and/or any affiliate thereof) shall not assume any responsibility or liability of any nature in connection with any of the contents of this communication. This communication is tailored for a particular audience and accordingly, this message is intended for such specific audience only. Any dissemination, re-distribution or other use of this message or the market commentary contained herein by any recipient is unauthorized. This communication should not be construed as a research report. The services, securities and investments discussed in this report may not be available to, nor suitable for, all investors. Nothing in this communication constitutes a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any specific investments discussed herein. Speakers on this podcast do not have any actual, implied or apparent authority to act on behalf of any issuer mentioned in this podcast. The commentary and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the individual speaker(s), except where the author expressly states them to be the opinions of CIBC World Markets Corp. The speaker(s) may provide short-term trading views or ideas on issuers, securities, commodities, currencies or other financial instruments but investors should not expect continuing analysis, views or discussion relating to those instruments discussed herein. Any information provided herein is not intended to represent an adequate basis for investors to make an informed investment decision and is subject to change without notice. CIBC Capital Markets is a trademark brand name under which Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (“CIBC”), its subsidiaries and affiliates provide products and services to our customers around the world. For more information about these legal entities, as well as the products and services offered by CIBC Capital Markets, please visit www.cibccm.com.