(Bloomberg) -- Brookfield Asset Management has raised $19 billion for new funds this year and says it’s relying heavily on cash-rich investors in the Middle East and Asia to fuel its growth.

About 40% of the capital the firm has raised in the past year comes from those two regions and US clients are becoming a smaller part of the business, Chief Executive Officer Bruce Flatt and President Connor Teskey said in a letter to shareholders Wednesday. 

The Canadian alternative asset manager is actively raising money to invest in real estate, infrastructure, private equity and credit strategies. The latter plays a particularly large role in its plan to more than double fee-bearing assets under management, to $1 trillion, in five years. 

Large, diversified global investment managers are “set to win” as weaker players fall away, Flatt and Teskey wrote. “The bottom line is that during tougher markets, consolidation occurs and the best-in-class players continue to perform, separating themselves from the rest,” the executives wrote.  

Brookfield earned $516 million in the first quarter, or 32 cents a share, in line with estimates by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Distributable earnings were $563 million, up 15% from the same period last year. All of the firm’s flagship funds are currently in the market fundraising, Teskey said in a statement.

Brookfield fell 2.4% to $32.50 in New York trading at 10 a.m. 

Brookfield Asset Management manages money on behalf of pensions, sovereign wealth funds and other parties, as well as some of Brookfield Corp.’s own capital. In December, the parent separated the asset management arm, setting up a new public company, Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., to hold 25% of the business in the belief it could lead to a higher valuation. Brookfield Corp. owns the other 75%. 

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Alternative asset managers are grappling with a radically different investment environment than the one that prevailed over the past decade, as higher interest rates have made leveraged acquisitions more expensive and increased the odds of a recession. 

Now, many of those managers are shifting their attention to lending, helping to fill a financing gap left by banks. Brookfield, which ended the quarter with $432 billion of fee-bearing assets, has launched a direct lending strategy that originates senior secured loans of $500 million or more to private equity-owned US companies. It’s also raising capital across other debt strategies including preferred equity financing. 

Brookfield bought a majority stake in Howard Marks’s Oaktree Capital Group more than three years ago to boost its credit capabilities. 

Brookfield currently has $24 billion committed to a new infrastructure fund and $9 billion to a private equity fund and is near final closes on both, it said. It has targeted raising as much as $25 billion for the infrastructure fund, Bloomberg reported last year, and $12 billion for the private equity strategy.

Brookfield invested $17 billion during the quarter and made a number of new commitments, including the takeover of Triton International, the world’s largest owner and lessor of intermodal containers.

Read More: Real Estate Woes Weigh on Brookfield After December Spinoff 

(Updates with share price in seventh paragraph)

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