Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

Infliction is killing me!

But who cares? Big retailers are making record profits!

That's why we support the Durban Marshall Credit Card Bill!

See? Banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll.

This bill would cut the vital resources they need.

While increasing megastore profits, they deserve it, don't they?

Tell Congress, stop the Durban Marshall money grab for corporate megastores.

Paid for it by the Electronic Payments Coalition.

Hello everyone and welcome to Ed Barron's. I'm Andy Surwer and welcome to our guest, Bruce Flats, CEO of Brookfield Corporation and Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oak Tree Capital Management.

Bruce Howard, nice to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. So Brookfield is the big alternative investment company. Oak Tree is also an investment

company which is specialized in distress debt. We're talking to both of you because Brookfield now

owns Oak Tree. Bruce, why don't I start with you? You bought a big piece of Oak Tree in 2019

and more recently now you've bought the entire company.

Why did you buy it in the first place the piece and why did you buy the whole thing now?

Thanks for having us, Andy. And look, I would just say we're in the business of providing backbone infrastructure around the world.

And what that really means is we build, own, operate, and lend to the largest groups of

infrastructure on the planet.

So think railways and pipelines and data centers and AI factories and transmission lines and

renewable power and all of those backbone infrastructure.

And seven years ago, we had equity strategies in all these and small funds where we could provide lending.

And we looked around the world and said, if we were going to get there and achieve excellence for our

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