Adebayo Ogunlesi: What I’ll add to that is I think Larry is exactly right. We are about leading the golden age of infrastructure investment. And so the question for us at GIP was always how do we accelerate what we do. We’re going to keep trying to do what we are doing by ourselves, but we thought that looking at it from both point of view, from the point of view of infrastructure investing, Larry is right. We have tremendous tailwinds that are going to drive the demand for private capital infrastructure investing. On our client side, the pension funds are sovereign well funds the asset managers, infrastructure is what they want to invest in. They like the fact that infrastructure has very high yields, the average yield on our mature funds over the last 15 years annually is 8%, okay?
That’s in a world of zero interest rates. We generated 8% yield. They like the fact that these assets are uncorrelated to other asset classes. Think about what’s going on today. Infrastructure assets are doing very well. We have 19 companies in our flagship funds, 12 of them had double-digit asset EBITDA growth last year, five of them, single-digit EBITDA growth. The only one that didn’t was because it sold assets. Compare that to the other real asset class, commercial real estate, okay? So investors love the fact that these asset classes are not correlated. They like the fact there’s a lot of downside protection, right? Because they provide essential services, okay? And so these are all sort of congruence that we thought how do we accelerate what we’re doing.
And the marriage with BlackRock is a marriage made in heaven. Rob Kapito said this is a deal where one plus one equals four. I’m not sure whether it’s three or four, but I know Rob is directionally correct, okay? When we look at the two businesses, they’re very complementary. BlackRock has built a terrific infrastructure business. They’ve tripled the size of it over the last years that they’ve owned it. But they make mid-market or mid-cup investments. We make large cup investments. We have a terrific infrastructure debt business. It’s mostly investment grade, ours is mostly below investment grade. We have capital solutions business that we don’t have. So if you put these two businesses together, we can go to clients, large cap clients, mid-cap clients, offer them a complete array of solutions.
You want investment-grade debt, we’ve got. You want high method investment grade debt, we’ve got it, okay? And so we think this will allow us to accelerate the rate at which we can provide investment opportunities for our clients. And look, it’s always nice to think you’re right. The proof of the pudding is what people say when you call them. And as Larry mentioned, he and I have been on the phone with our clients. And this is what they’ve said. This is a fantastic transaction. One, for us as clients two, for BlackRock and three for GIP. Now I wish I have known that put BlackRock ahead of GIP because then going to ask for a higher price, but it’s all worked out very well. And I think the other thing people should recall is — and I hope Martin and Larry don’t mind me saying this.
We are taking 75% of the consideration in stock. The initial offer from BlackRock was actually a low model stuff, okay? We like the fact that BlackRock thinks their stock is undervalued. And the fact that we are taking 75% in BlackRock stock tells us we also think it’s undervalue. And the final thing I’d say is we actually looked at — Larry talked about how the call will be very different. I think that’s absolutely true. But we’ve also looked at what BlackRock has actually done when it has acquired businesses. Interesting congruent, iShares or BGI, three trillion assets when they bought it today, 10 billion. Okay. So now it’s 3.5 okay. Okay. So that’s actually a little bit scary. Infrastructure, they triple the sites. So it’s clear to me the supplemental message is we have to at least double the size of our infrastructure portfolio going forward.
I hope that answers your question.
Operator: Go next to Michael Cyprus with Morgan Stanley.
Michael Cyprys: Hey, good morning. Happy New Year. Congratulations on the transaction. Just curious what are the plans for integration. If you could talk about that a bit? And any particular lessons that you take away from other private market transactions, acquisitions that we’ve seen across the industry as you think about driving success here?
Martin Small: Thanks, Mike. Happy New Year. We have a really strong track record of successful integrations at BlackRock. And we believe this transaction will prove to be another success. I think Larry and Bayo spoke very much about the common cultures, the shared vision, the opportunities, the growth with clients. We know that GIP shares the same laser focus on clients and values that we do rigorous investment process in us and the structuring of the transaction was also done to reduce strain on teams and help facilitate the transition into new leadership in a more diversified platform. Some of the organizational changes that we also announced today are going to help us be more nimble and aligned with our clients. We’ve reorganized businesses for the future with the aim of delivering better experience performance and outcomes for clients.
