Macquarie Asset Management takes share in VIRTUS Data Centres

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), a leading Singapore-based data centre provider, has closed a significant investment from Macquarie Asset Management in its European subsidiary, VIRTUS Data Centres (VIRTUS). The transaction, via Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund 7, will see Macquarie Asset Management take a 40 percent stake to become a significant minority shareholder in VIRTUS.

STT GDC is one of Asia's largest data centre operators and actively manages a portfolio of over 170 data centres in nine countries - Singapore, the United Kingdom, India, China, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. The company supports an aggregate IT load of more than 2.2 gigawatts with a net floor area of >1 million sqm across all of its facilities globally.

The investment will enable STT GDC to scale up its operations in the European Economic Area (EEA), with new data centre campuses planned in European countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and others. Together, STT GDC and MAM have ambitious plans for the region with close to £2 billion of investment planned in its target markets over the next five years. The expansion will complement STT GDC's current leading position in the UK, where it currently manages 11 data centre facilities in the Greater London region through VIRTUS.

"This is an exciting milestone for STT GDC. 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," said Bruno Lopez, President & Group Chief Executive Officer, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres.

"STT GDC's 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 STT GDC to help scale VIRTUS' operations. 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," said Nathan Luckey, a Senior Managing Director within Macquarie Asset Management's Real Assets team.

Research from KPMG suggests that double-digit growth is required in Europe's data centre industry during the next 10 years to ensure data resiliency as the continent's economies become more data and cloud centric. The same study also suggests that the industry will enjoy ~15% CAGR across Europe through 2025 and ~11% CAGR for the decade, driven in the short term by enterprise cloud adoption and data sovereignty requirements. 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.