ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, a subsidiary of ST Telemedia, has closed a transaction from Macquarie Asset Management for its European subsidiary, Virtus Data Centres (Virtus). ST Telemedia is, in turn, a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.
The announcement on Jan 11 follows ST Telemedia Global Data Centres’ prior announcement in August 2022.
This time, the company confirmed that Macquarie Asset Management will be taking a 40% stake in Virtus, thus becoming its “significant majority shareholder”.
According to ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, the investment will allow the company to scale up its operations in the European Economic Area (EEA) with new data campuses planned in countries including Germany, Italy and Spain.
Both ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and Macquarie Asset Management have planned to invest EUR2 billion ($2.86 billion) in their target markets over the next five years.
“The expansion will complement ST Telemedia Global Data Centres’ current leading position in the UK, where it currently manages 11 data centre facilities in the Greater London region through Virtus,” says the company in its statement.
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Bruno Lopez, president and group CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres called the milestone an “exciting” one, adding that “Macquarie Asset Management’s investment is a testament to the strength and scalability of our data centre business”.
“This substantial capital injection coupled with both partners’ unique expertise will help us accelerate our expansion into the European Economic Area to capture the enormous opportunities ahead and cement our leadership in the industry,” he continues.
“ST Telemedia Global Data Centres’ high-quality platform has captured the new consumption habits of consumers, and the digitisation of business processes, as the digital economy continues to thrive. We are delighted to partner with ST Telemedia Global Data Centres to help scale Virtu’' operations,” says Nathan Luckey, a senior managing director within Macquarie Asset Management’s real assets team.
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“Through this long-term investment, coupled with our sustainability expertise, we intend to help drive their ambitious expansion across continental Europe where we believe there will be sizeable growth opportunities for data centre players during the next decade,” he adds.
Referring to KPMG’s research on the evolving data centre landscape, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres notes that Europe’s data centre industry will require double-digit growth in the next 10 years to ensure data resiliency. This is as the continent’s economies become more data and cloud centric.
“The same study also suggests that the industry will enjoy [around] 15% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) across Europe through 2025 and [around] 11% CAGR for the decade, driven in the short term by enterprise cloud adoption and data sovereignty requirements,” reads ST Telemedia Global Data Centres’ statement. “Technologies such as the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to drive demand for data centre services in the latter part of the decade.”
