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An investment group led by BlackRock has purchased two of Panama’s biggest port operations from a Hong Kong company.

The company acquired the Balboa and Cristóbal port businesses located at either end of the Panama Canal from CK Hutchison as part of a $22.8 billion deal that included 43 ports in 23 countries. CK Hutchison had been running the Panama ports for more than two decades.

While Pres. Donald Trump has said the purchase was in response to his efforts to “reclaim” control of the Panama Canal, the deal had reportedly been in the works for months. Company officials said Hutchison received numerous bids and expressions of interest on purchasing the ports.

“I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports,” CK Hutchison co-managing director Frank Sixt said in a statement.

That said, the purchase was seen as an opportunity to tone down recent tension around the Canal. With an American company in control of the two port operations, it should help to deflate the rhetoric about “China’s control’ of the Canal.” 

“It is an elegant off-ramp for what looked to be an unsolvable crisis,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center, told the New York Times.

BlackRock has been steadily expanding its port business after buying Global Infrastructure Partners last year for almost $13 billion, which included ports, airports, and data centers.

Hutchison’s Panama Ports company was the only firm to manage terminals on both sides of the canal, which gave the company an unusually large market share. Other ports are operated by Seattle-based SSA Marine, Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine and PSA Singapore.