GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and Equinix, a global interconnection and data center company, have agreed to enter into an 80-20 joint venture to acquire and develop six hyperscale data centers in Europe for more than $1 billion.
The venture will acquire two operational data centers in London and Paris, which together deliver approximately 31 megawatts of critical power to customers. It plans to further develop four data centers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt (two sites) and London. When fully developed, these initial six facilities will provide approximately 155 megawatts of power capacity. Equinix will develop, operate and manage the data centers.
Charles Meyers, president and CEO, Equinix, said, “It has been a long journey to reach this point, but we are tremendously excited to announce the formation of our first xScale data centers joint venture. Partnering with a world-class investment firm like GIC will provide the opportunity to make significant capital investments in order to capture targeted large footprint deployments while continuing to optimize our capital structure. The joint venture structure will enable us to extend our cloud leadership while providing significant value to a critical set of hyperscale customers. We look forward to launching similar joint ventures in other operating regions and believe that these efforts will continue to further differentiate Equinix as the trusted center of a cloud-first world.”
Lee Kok Sun, CIO, GIC Real Estate, said, “As a long-term value investor, we are confident that the strong growth in data consumption and public cloud data storage will continue to drive secular demand for hyperscale data centers. We believe the venture portfolio, which is well-located in the primary European data center hubs and under the management of an established partner such as Equinix, will generate steady and resilient returns in the long run. We look forward to expanding our global partnerships and exploring further opportunities in this fast-growing sector worldwide.”
The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close in third quarter 2019.