Exhibit 99.3
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![LOGO](https://capedge.com/proxy/8-K/0001193125-19-073393/g697805g69m93.jpg)
| | Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. 333 South Grand Avenue, 28th Floor Los Angeles, CA 90071 p 213830-6300f 213830-6495 |
March 13, 2019
Dear Oaktree Client:
By now you’ve likely heard about Oaktree’s decision to partner with Brookfield Asset Management. We’re writing to provide the background.
Sixteen years ago, in his memo2002 in Review, Howard mentioned that a money management industry newsletter had described us as having put Oaktree up for sale. He went on as follows:
We told those who inquired that we had hired Goldman Sachs three years earlier to help us evaluate offers for a minority interest fromwould-be investors and see if we could do better. But obviously nothing had been consummated in three years. And now it’s four.
This update will be brief. Our requirements have always been unambiguous:
| (a) | a prestigious affiliation that would bring resources to Oaktree, |
| (b) | with a party willing to pay a fair price for anon-controlling investment that would entail |
| (c) | no cessation of Oaktree’s existence as an autonomous entity, |
| (d) | no diminution of Oaktree’s role in representing its own products to clients, and |
| (e) | no reduction of our freedom to manage our accounts and our business. |
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these stringent criteria haven’t been met, and as a result we have decided to place this topic and our work with Goldman solidly on the back burner. However improbable a transaction was a year ago, we consider it even less likely now.
That mention prompted a group of Oaktree clients to respond that they would do what we had indicated, and they bought a total of 13% of Oaktree on those terms in 2004 and 2007. Following that, we went semi-public in 2007 and fully public in 2012.
As a public company, we’ve experienced the market’s lack of enthusiasm for an asset manager that’s more concerned with its clients’ interests than with growing AUM and profits when it thinks growing would be a mistake. The public listing also hasn’t provided all of the liquidity we sought in order to facilitate generational transfer.