Enter the name of Toronto-based public company Brookfield Asset Management into a search engine and it delivers more than 1 million results. The global conglomerate, whose annual sales exceed $18 billion, controls ports in England, owns Manhattan’s prestigious World Financial Center and sells Chicago a fair measure of its electricity. Yet the massive enterprise is better known for what it owns than how it operates. The Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation began a full-time investigation into Brookfield’s far-flung operations in late fall. Our reporting and research uncovered a series of earnings quality problems, the presence of a mostly hidden ownership group that effectively controls Brookfield’s governance and corporate structure, and a business model that involves heavy reliance on related-party transactions with its subsidiaries. Continue Reading →
The Infernal Machine: From Powder to Dust
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To understand why a company called ViSalus is the fastest-growing company of its size in the United States, just watch cofounder Nick Sarnicola in action at one of the company’s periodic sales conferences. In the video that ViSalus posted on YouTube of a July conference in Miami, Sarnicola’s turbocharged pitch inside a packed 18,000-seat arena has people on their feet, pumping fists, clapping, waving, even dancing. A politician or entertainer can only dream of an audience response like this. People don’t usually pay good money to travel to Miami in sweltering summer heat and then readily wedge themselves into a packed arena to see someone strut around and talk on a hastily assembled theatrical stage — about a company whose major product is powder for a weight-loss shake. Sarnicola is an unlikely standard-bearer. Continue Reading →