Brookfield: How infrastructure can deliver returns, diversification and yield

Infrastructure is playing an ever-more important role in investor portfolios, says Brookfield's Sam Garetano. 

And there are three good reasons for that: risk-adjusted returns, diversification and yield.

This interview was filmed on 17 September 2025.

"Infrastructure can provide really strong risk-adjusted returns through market cycles," says Garetano. "Investors get diversification because you're investing in assets that provide an essential service. The counter-parties to our investments are typically investment-grade corporations or governments that really provide stable, predictable cash flows. 

"Infrastructure is [also] often viewed as an inflation hedge because in our revenue frameworks, the types of assets we make, we have usually direct inflation escalators.

"And then ultimately, many investors also view infrastructure as a way to get a pretty attractive yield because typically we're investing in assets that have strong cashflow profiles with distributions that we can ultimately provide to our investors."

In this interview, Garetano lays out where he's seeing the big opportunities in the space (including Australia) and how Brookfield's longer-term approach is delivering returns. 

A wealth of opportunities

Whatever modern growth industry you care to consider, infrastructure is at the heart of it. 

"If you look over the last three-to-four years, you really had this emergence of an infrastructure supercycle," says Garetano. 

"The pandemic started, and we were all working from home, and everyone needed their data to work faster. Today, data is the world's fastest-growing commodity, and then you add in AI and the theme of digitalisation just playing out more and more."

Add in decarbonisation and renewable energy, supply chains and critical industries, and the infrastructure space is presenting more opportunities than ever. 

And for investors, infrastructure is now in a position where it can play a few crucial roles in a portfolio. Depending on the investor, infrastructure can be played as a fixed income replacement, or simply provide exposure to real estate or private market assets. It can also go further. 

"First and foremost, we are a long-term investor. So when we think about an infrastructure, we're not looking to capture a one to three-year short-term tailwind. We're really thinking about what's a theme or business that we want to own for 10, 20, 30 years, maybe perpetuity."

Going big on Australia

As part of its long-term, quality-driven approach, Brookfield sees big opportunities down under. "Australia is one of our biggest markets," says Garetano. "We have a very large investment team based here in Sydney."