Following the successful completion of the sales of our Korea and Taiwan insurance businesses, which produced $1.8 billion in proceeds, we reached agreements to divest our full-service business and a portion of our traditional variable annuities.
We are on track to close both of these transactions in the first half of 2022 and generate additional proceeds of over $4 billion.
We continue to advance our cost savings program and are on track to achieve $750 million in savings by the end of 2023.
To date, we have already achieved $635 million in run-rate cost savings, exceeding our $500 million target for 2021.
We currently plan to return a total of $11 billion of capital to shareholders between 2021 and the end of 2023.
This includes $4.3 billion returned during 2021 through share repurchases and dividends.
As part of this plan, the board has authorized $1.5 billion of share repurchases and a 4% increase in our quarterly dividend beginning in the first quarter.
We also reduced debt by $1.3 billion in 2021.
Our capital deployment strategy is supported by a rock-solid balance sheet which includes $3.6 billion in highly liquid assets at the end of the fourth quarter and a capital position that continues to support our AA financial strength rating.
We committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across our primary global home office operations, with an interim goal of becoming carbon-neutral in these facilities by 2040.
We are also reviewing our general account investment holdings and have restricted new direct investments in companies that derive 25% or more of their revenues from thermal coal.
On the social front, the Prudential Foundation surpassed $1 billion in grants to partners primarily focused on eliminating barriers to financial and social mobility around the world.
This achievement follows another milestone that we reached in 2020 when our impact investment portfolio exceeded $1 billion.
Our governance actions reflected a shared commitment to diversity and inclusion, beginning at the top with over 80% of our independent board directors being diverse.
In 2021, we enhanced our diversity disclosures by publishing EEO-1 data and the results of our pay equity analysis for our U.S. employees.
For 2021, pre-tax adjusted operating income was $7.3 billion or $14.58 a share on an after-tax basis.
Results for the year included a benefit from the outperformance of variable investment income that exceeded target returns by about $1.6 billion, reflecting market performance, strategy, and manager selection.
In the fourth quarter, pre-tax adjusted operating income was $1.6 billion or $3.18 a share on an after-tax basis, while GAAP net income was $3.13 per share.
Of note, our GAAP net income includes realized investment gains and favorable market experience updates that were offset by a goodwill impairment that resulted in a charge of $837 million net of tax.
PGIM, our global asset manager, had record asset management fees driven by record account values of over $1.5 trillion.
Results of our U.S. Businesses increased 13% from the year-ago quarter and reflected higher net investment spread, including a greater benefit from variable investment income, higher fee income, primarily driven by equity market appreciation, partially offset by higher expenses driven by a legal reserve and less favorable underwriting experience due to COVID-19-related mortality.
Earnings in our international businesses increased 5%, reflecting continued business growth, lower expenses, and higher net investment spread.
PGIM continues to demonstrate the strength of its diversified capabilities in both public and private asset classes across fixed income, alternatives, real estate, and equities as a top 10 global investment manager.
PGIM's investment performance remains attractive with more than 95% of assets under management outperforming their benchmarks over the last three, five- and 10-year periods.
This performance has contributed to third-party net flows of $11 billion for the year, with positive flows across U.S. and non-U.S.-based clients in both public and private strategies.
We continue to expand our global equity franchise to grow our alternatives and private credit business, which has assets in excess of $240 billion across private credit and real estate equity and debt and benefits from our global scale and market-leading positions.
Notably, PGIM's private businesses deployed nearly $50 billion of gross capital, up 33% from last year.
Our product pivots have worked well, demonstrated by continued strong sales of our buffered annuities, which were nearly $6 billion for the year, representing 87% of total individual annuity sales.
Our individual life sales also reflect our earlier product pivot strategy with variable products representing 71% of sales for the year.
Our retirement business has market-leading capabilities, which drove robust international reinsurance and funded pension risk transfer sales, including a $5 billion transaction, which was the fourth largest in the history of the market during 2021.
With respect to Assurance, our digitally enabled distribution platform, total revenues for the year were up 43% from last year.
Pre-tax adjusted operating income in the fourth quarter was $1.6 billion and resulted in earnings per share of $3.18 on an after-tax basis.
To get a sense for all our first quarter results might develop, we suggest adjustments for the following items: first, variable investment income outperformed expectations in the fourth quarter by $440 million.
Next, we adjust underwriting experience by a net $90 million.
This adjustment includes a placeholder for COVID-19's claims experience in the first quarter of $195 million, assuming 75,000 COVID-19-related fatalities in the U.S. While we have provided this placeholder for COVID-related claims experience, the actual impact will depend on a variety of factors such as infection and fatality rates, geographic and demographic mix and the effectiveness of vaccines.
Third, we expect seasonal expenses and other items will be lower in the first quarter by $105 million.
Fourth, we anticipate net investment income will be reduced by about $10 million, reflecting the difference between new money rates and disposition yields of our investment portfolio.
These items combined get us to a baseline of $2.73 per share for the first quarter.
I'll note that if you exclude items specific to the first quarter, earnings per share would be $3.17.
The key takeaway is that the underlying earnings power per share continues to improve and has increased 9% over the last year, driven by business growth, the benefits of our cost savings program, capital management and market appreciation.
Our cash and liquid assets were $3.6 billion and within our $3 billion to $5 billion liquidity target range and other sources of funds include free cash flow from our businesses and contingent capital facilities.

Summary:
In the fourth quarter, pre-tax adjusted operating income was $1.6 billion or $3.18 a share on an after-tax basis, while GAAP net income was $3.13 per share.
Pre-tax adjusted operating income in the fourth quarter was $1.6 billion and resulted in earnings per share of $3.18 on an after-tax basis.