well what got a lot of attention in terms of infrastructure investing uh and maybe Mis represented in the press the notion that black rock had bought the Panama Canal I think you've tried to correct that impression and also making it clear that it wasn't just first it was ports and it wasn't just Panama so tell us tell us what you've done and why you've done it well first of all my kids called me and said you Black Rock bought the Panama Canal can we go on it and I said we did not buy the Panama
Canal um this is something we've been working with the seller Hutchinson woa for some time but it was a very concentrated period about two weeks where they um you know they've been faced with a very poor stock price for some time um from our estimates Hut Hutson was trading at 30% a book um and um and they decided uh after much deliberation to see what the market would take uh related to selling there 44 ports in 32 countries I mean there are six of the ports are in the Suez Canal no one ever mentions that
one or or or or all the other ports that are around there um six just in the SE Canal uhhuh yeah um but through uh our our uh through Gip which is which a company we bought uh last year um there was a partnership between Gip Black Rock and um uh uh the largest shipping company in the world um uh so um through and they own a a port company called till uh we had the most strategic I would say partnership uh uh to build this out and through this acquisition we are going to have
100 ports in our portfolio um and we look at this as a as a real Milestone and a real opportunity unfortunately the far left and the far right didn't mention that we bought um 44 ports they mentioned we bought two um and so the total consideration I would say the two ports in Panama represent about 4% of the total consideration value of that transaction um and so U but that's another great example of private Capital coming the amount of demand that we have S heard from our LPS or co-investors across the board I believe we
probably could Syndicate this about three times are ports a good business it's a great stable business if if you believe that the world can grow at two or 3% maybe three and a half% a year there's that means even with um tariffs and other things you know it it it it means um uh the ports are going to be quite active and they're going to throw off as I said 15 16 type of percent return
