$Brookfield资管(BAM)$ 从历年#博枫股东信#中，随手摘选一些时效性不强的文字。
为节省精力，用有道机器翻译的，有很多词不达意的地方，所以都附上中英对照。
Our Business is About Planting Seeds and Then Harvesting the Crops
【我们的业务是播种，然后收获作物】
Our business is about buying and growing businesses. We buy in areas in which we have expertise; we then try to operate the assets well; and finally we harvest cash from those assets when it makes sense. Some years are better for planting seeds, others are better for harvesting. Rarely are both exceptional at the same time, in the same place. This is why being diversified by business and country is important.
我们的业务是收购和发展业务。我们在自己有专长的领域进行收购;然后，我们努力经营好资产;最后，当这些资产有意义时，我们会从这些资产中获得现金。有些年份适合播种，有些年份适合收获。在同一时间、同一地点，这两种情况很少是异常的。这就是为什么企业和国家的多元化很重要。
During 2020, we made many investments and deployed substantial capital. As we turn to 2021, the capital markets in developed markets are robust and we are monetizing assets at excellent values. On the other hand, in some markets like India, China, and Europe, markets are less flush with capital and therefore offer opportunities for buyers. In addition, some businesses were more affected by the pandemic – such as hotels, travel, tourism, in-person retail and other businesses which rely on human touch. Many of these sectors need capital, and we are focused on a number of them.
在2020年期间，我们进行了许多投资，部署了大量资金。在进入2021年之际，发达市场的资本市场表现强劲，我们正在以极好的价值将资产货币化。另一方面，在印度、中国和欧洲等一些市场，资本较少，因此为买家提供了机会。此外，一些行业受疫情影响更大，如酒店、旅游、旅游、面对面零售和其他依赖人际接触的行业。其中许多行业都需要资金，我们关注的是其中一些行业。
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are times when it is good to sell assets and times when it is not. It is better to sell when markets are robust. In the first half of 2020, most private assets were not saleable at reasonable prices, so we sold almost nothing. Our results reflected it.
另一方面，出售资产有时有利，有时不利。最好在市场强劲时卖出。在2020年上半年，大多数私人资产无法以合理的价格出售，所以我们几乎什么也卖不出去。我们的结果反映了这一点。
Today, on the other hand, it is time to harvest in many places. Central banks have put enormous stimulus into developed economies to ensure markets recover from the recession, resulting in substantial availability of capital. Therefore, in the last quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021, we harvested substantial cash through asset sales – resulting in $19 billion returned to clients and $5 billion added to our balance sheet, with most of these sales in excess of our view of long term value, and almost all in excess of IFRS values.
另一方面，今天是许多地方收获的时候。各国央行向发达经济体注入了大量刺激措施，以确保市场从衰退中复苏，从而产生了大量可用资金。因此，在2020年最后一个季度和2021年第一季度，我们通过出售资产收获了大量现金——结果是190亿美元返还给客户，50亿美元增加到我们的资产负债表，其中大部分出售资产超过了我们对长期价值的预期，几乎所有资产都超过了国际财务报告准则的价值。
Culture is Everything
【文化是一切】
Part of our confidence in our real estate business stems from our long-term perspective, and our having been in the business for many decades. The other factor is our experience in building a company culture. There has been a debate going on in the news globally about whether a company should have office space, or whether instead it can merely exist online. Our view is that in the short term many survived without an office, but in the long term, a company will not prosper without the interaction that comes with people working together in an office. We come to this conclusion for numerous reasons, but mostly because of Culture.
我们对房地产业务的信心部分来自于我们的长远眼光，以及我们从事这一行几十年的经验。另一个因素是我们在建立公司文化方面的经验。关于一家公司是否应该拥有办公空间，或者是否可以只在网上存在，全球的新闻都在争论不休。我们的观点是，在短期内，许多人在没有办公室的情况下生存下来，但从长远来看，一个公司如果没有人们在办公室里一起工作的互动，就不会繁荣。我们得出这个结论有很多原因，但主要是因为文化。
Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon captured the meaning of Culture in a section of their book “How Will You Measure Your Life?” It goes as follows:
克莱顿·m·克里斯滕森、詹姆斯·奥尔沃斯和凯伦·狄龙在他们的书《你将如何衡量你的生活?》中的一个章节中抓住了文化的意义。具体内容如下:
Culture is a way of working toward common goals that have been followed so frequently and so successfully that people don’t even think about trying to do things another way. If a Culture has formed, people will autonomously do what they need to be successful. These instincts aren’t formed overnight. Rather they are the result of shared learning—of employees working together to solve problems and figuring out what works.
文化是一种朝着共同目标努力的方式，人们经常成功地遵循这些目标，甚至不去想用另一种方式做事。如果一种文化已经形成，人们就会自主地去做他们需要成功的事情。这些本能不是一夜之间形成的。相反，它们是共同学习的结果——员工们一起解决问题，找出可行的方法。
The advantage of this is that it effectively causes an organization to become self-managing. Managers don’t need to be omnipotent to enforce the rules. People instinctively get on with what needs to be done.
这样做的好处是，它可以有效地促使组织实现自我管理。管理人员不需要无所不能来执行规则。人们本能地去做需要做的事。
As far back as ancient Rome, emperors would send off an associate to govern a newly conquered territory thousands of miles away. As the emperors watched the chariot go over the hill—knowing full well they would not see their associate again for years—they needed to know that their understudy’s priorities were consistent with their own, and that he [or she] would use proven, accepted methods to solve problems. Culture was the only way to make sure this happened.
早在古罗马时期，皇帝就会派遣一个助手去管理几千英里外新征服的领土。当皇帝们看着战车翻越山头——他们很清楚自己将在数年内无法再见到自己的助手——他们需要知道他们的替补和自己的工作重点是一致的，他(或她)会用经过验证的、公认的方法来解决问题。文化是确保这一切发生的唯一途径。
We are not in Roman times, but the Culture of an organization is often the difference between those seemingly always able to make good decisions, and those which often seem to make bad decisions. To make this specific point, we ask you to pause and reflect on companies and management teams you have invested with. We suspect that when you do so, you will find a strong Culture in the great companies you’ve invested with, and a weak Culture in the average to below-average ones. This is not an accident.
我们不是在罗马时代，但一个组织的文化往往是那些似乎总是能做出正确决定的人和那些似乎经常做出错误决定的人之间的区别。为了明确这一点，我们要求你停下来反思一下你投资过的公司和管理团队。我们怀疑，当你这样做的时候，你会发现你投资的伟大的公司有很强的文化，而一般或低于平均水平的公司则有较弱的文化。这并非偶然。
This leads us back to office space. We believe the Culture of a company can only be maintained with a physical presence. Video technology can assist, but it cannot replace physical presence. Companies without a distinct Culture will slowly die over time if they try to get by on video interaction. Of course, some jobs can be done from home, and many specific activities in fact are augmented by video technology, but offices are a very important part of bringing people together in order to build trust for advancing goals and dealing with the inevitable tough times all organizations face on occasions. Furthermore, without the learning that is passed on from more experienced colleagues to younger generations—and the camaraderie created by an office—there is no link between humans. With no links between humans, a Culture does not exist, and with no Culture, eventually there will be no company.
这就把我们带回到了办公空间。我们相信一个公司的文化只能通过实体存在来维持。视频技术可以提供帮助，但它不能取代物理存在。没有独特文化的公司如果只靠视频互动就会慢慢死掉。当然，有些工作可以在家里完成，许多具体的活动实际上是通过视频技术增强的，但办公室是一个非常重要的部分，它把人们聚集在一起，以建立互信，推进目标，并处理所有组织都会遇到的不可避免的困难时刻。此外，没有经验丰富的同事传授给年轻一代的知识和办公室所创造的友谊，人与人之间就没有联系。没有人与人之间的联系，文化就不存在，没有文化，最终也就没有公司。
We look forward to seeing you at the office.
我们期待在办公室见到你。
Infrastructure Privatization is Accelerating
【基础设施私有化正在加速】
Infrastructure assets continue to move into private hands; institutional capital is increasingly available for investment in infrastructure; and the stability of cash flows over the last year has proved the durability of the infrastructure business.
基础设施资产继续流向私人手中;越来越多的机构资本可用于基础设施投资;去年现金流的稳定证明了基础设施业务的持久性。
During the last year, two very significant macro events occurred. Each adds very substantially to the positive backdrop for global infrastructure investment. The first is that to create the stimulus programs to combat the pandemic, virtually every government in the world borrowed more money than they ever imagined and have yet to address the question of how to pay it back.
去年，发生了两个非常重大的宏观事件。这一切都极大地增加了全球基础设施投资的积极背景。首先，为了制定抗击疫情的刺激计划，世界上几乎每个政府都借了超出他们想象的钱，还没有解决如何偿还的问题。
The second is that interest rates were reduced very substantially and unless central banks get it wrong in exiting this period, they look to stay “lowish” for this cycle. As a result, institutional investors increasingly turn to alternative investments to enhance returns as they continue to rotate out of low-yielding government bonds.
第二，利率大幅下调，除非央行在退出这一时期出错，否则他们希望在本轮周期中保持“较低”利率水平。因此，随着机构投资者继续从低收益的政府债券中撤出，他们越来越多地转向另类投资，以提高回报。
With respect to repaying government debt, there are only two ways out: economies must grow and generate increased taxes to ensure that the debt can be serviced and reduced, or assets must be sold. For a government, asset sales generally mean the sale of infrastructure assets and/or letting others (the private sector) make future investment when they are required. As a result, private infrastructure spending is set to increase in a step change fashion. This will create opportunities for private investors for decades.
至于偿还政府债务，只有两条出路:经济必须增长并增加税收，以确保债务能够得到偿还和减少，或者必须出售资产。对政府来说，资产出售通常意味着出售基础设施资产和/或在需要的时候让其他人(私营部门)进行未来投资。其结果是，私人基础设施支出将以循序渐进的方式增加。这将为私人投资者创造几十年的机会。
Using just two examples, the global economy will require trillions of dollars of investment to bring 5G to their citizens (cell towers, data centers, fiber) and to transport natural gas to Asian economies so they can decarbonize away from coal. Farther away, the capital required to decarbonize the electricity grid and transition away from fossil fuels is one of the greatest investment undertakings to have ever been contemplated.
仅举两个例子，全球经济将需要数万亿美元的投资，才能将5G(手机信号塔、数据中心、光纤)提供给公民，并将天然气输送到亚洲经济体，使它们能够脱碳，摆脱对煤炭的依赖。在更远的地方，电网脱碳和从化石燃料过渡所需的资金是有史以来考虑过的最大投资项目之一。
The returns earned from our infrastructure investments have been excellent. The ±15% compound annual returns we’ve realized over 15 years would be a strong return in any asset class, but given the durability of infrastructure cash flows, it is even more exceptional. The cash-flow durability showed through during 2020, as every asset of ours was deemed essential and, with very few exceptions, generated the cash flows that were expected. This means infrastructure has passed the test and has become a full-scale asset class for investors – a far cry from where we started 20 years ago. As a result, we are now in a growth cycle of opportunities to invest, greater capital available to put to work, and a very strong backdrop to the business.
我们从基础设施投资中获得的回报非常好。我们在过去15年里实现的±15%的复合年回报率在任何资产类别中都是很高的回报，但考虑到基础设施现金流的持久性，这就更加特殊了。现金流的持久性在2020年得到了体现，因为我们的每一项资产都被认为是必不可少的，除了极少数例外，它们都产生了预期的现金流。这意味着基础设施已通过考验，已成为投资者的一种全面资产类别——与20年前的起点相去甚远。因此，我们现在处于一个有投资机会的增长周期中，有更多的资金可用于工作，业务背景非常强劲。
Even with an extremely positive backdrop, business is never easy; others have observed these same trends and are investing directly or raising third-party capital to invest into infrastructure. As a result, we have to be creative with our deals, but as always we will utilize our global reach and scale of operations to differentiate our capital from that of others. We think the odds favor a good decade ahead.
即使在极为积极的背景下，做生意也从来都不容易;其他国家也看到了同样的趋势，正直接投资或筹集第三方资本投资基础设施。因此，我们必须在交易中发挥创造性，但一如既往，我们将利用我们的全球影响力和运营规模，将我们的资本与其他资本区分开来。我们认为未来十年的可能性更大。
Interest Rates are Still Very Low
【利率仍然很低】
We believe central banks will be successful in engineering GDP growth and increased employment, which will in turn allow central banks to increase short rates from the zero bound level they have been tethered to for over a year. The ideal scenario is to have short rates in the U.S. increase slowly from zero to 2-ish% in the 2022/23 period. If this is in fact the case, a 10-year treasury note may see ±3%; this will mean global economies are doing well, creating a very constructive environment for the assets we own.
我们相信，各国央行将成功地推动GDP增长和就业增加，这反过来将使各国央行能够将短期利率从一年多来一直被束缚在零水平上的水平上调。理想的情况是，在2022/23年期间，美国短期利率从零缓慢上升到2%左右。如果情况确实如此，10年期国库券的收益率可能为±3%;这将意味着全球经济表现良好，为我们拥有的资产创造了一个非常有建设性的环境。
Many of our assets benefit from inflation protection, in addition to low-ish interest rates. It is very important to note that short rates at roughly 2% and long rates at roughly 3% are still very low compared to what has historically been reflected in underwriting the investments we make. In addition, rising rates generally means GDP is growing. Most of our businesses are resilient in tough environments but more valuable when underlying fundamentals are strong. The ideal conditions for us are strong economic growth combined with somewhat higher rates.
除了较低的利率外，我们的许多资产都受益于通胀保护。需要注意的是，与我们承保投资的历史水平相比，大约2%的短期利率和大约3%的长期利率仍然非常低。此外，利率上升通常意味着GDP在增长。我们的大多数业务在艰难的环境中都有弹性，但在基本面强劲时更有价值。对我们来说，理想的条件是强劲的经济增长与较高的利率相结合。
The only scenario that would be disruptive is short rates increasing precipitously to 4-5% due to out-of-control inflation, and no growth in the underlying economies (stagflation). However, we do not expect this to arise in this cycle, and therefore we expect the environment to be constructive.
唯一具有破坏性的情况是，由于通胀失控，短期利率急剧上升至4-5%，而基础经济没有增长(滞胀)。但是，我们不期望在这个周期中出现这种情况，因此我们期望环境是建设性的。
The return demanded for most of our investable asset classes have come down due to the decrease in risk-free rates globally, producing increases in asset values. The one laggard is commercial property assets, which are only now starting to move up. We would normally have seen values rise before now in response to the interest rate reductions; however, this hasn’t yet happened as a result of the perception of the impact of Covid and all that came with it in terms of real estate. As this perception abates, and in particular as people re-occupy offices globally, there is room for cap rates to move down and value to go up. If views toward commercial property strengthen, the appreciation of assets should occur irrespective of modest interest rate movements upward, as the spread of cap rates over interest rates is currently one of the widest ever.
由于全球无风险利率的下降，我们对大多数可投资资产类别的回报率要求已经下降，这导致了资产价值的上升。其中一个落后者是商业地产资产，现在才刚刚开始上涨。在此之前，我们通常会看到房价因降息而上涨;然而，这还没有发生，因为人们认为新冠肺炎的影响及其对房地产的影响。随着这种看法的减弱，特别是随着人们在全球重新占据办公室，上限利率有下调空间，价值有上升空间。如果市场对商业地产的看法增强，那么无论利率如何温和上行，资产都应该会升值，因为目前上限利率与利率之间的利差是有史以来最大的之一。