This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE nation’s largest superannuation fund, AustralianSuper, has signed a deal with DigitalBridge Group to invest $2.5 billion into Vantage Data Centers Europe, Middle East and Africa.
AustralianSuper will join global alternative investment manager, DigitalBridge, in becoming a key shareholder, with the acquisition of a significant minority stake in Vantage EMEA.
“We are delighted to welcome AustralianSuper as an investor to EMEA’s premier data center platform. Vantage, led by an experienced management team, has a track record of success and is aligned with the long-term growth of cloud demand and the need for AI infrastructure,” said Jon Mauck, senior managing director at Digital Bridge.
“Digital infrastructure continues to demonstrate its resilience as an asset class, and we look forward to building on our track record as we become a partner of choice to Australian investors seeking to increase their exposure to high-quality digital infrastructure investments.”
Vantage EMEA, is one of the fastest growing hyperscale data centre platforms in the EMEA region, with the new deal supporting the group’s growth plans.
“The Vantage EMEA platform is at an exciting point in its history, with a strong pipeline of developments in growing markets across the region,” said Nik Kemp, head of infrastructure at AustralianSuper.
“We look forward to working with DigitalBridge and Vantage EMEA to continue to support the rapid growth of its customers while also delivering on our purpose to help more than 3.2 million members achieve their best financial position in retirement.”
In AustralianSuper’s first significant exposure in data centres, Vantage EMEA will enable the expansion and development of hyperscale data centres across EMEA to meet the growing demand from global big data and cloud computing companies.
“AustralianSuper has a more than $40 billion infrastructure portfolio and in recent years we have been seeing more attractive opportunities in the digital infrastructure sector,” added Kemp.
“The acquisition of this significant minority stake in the Vantage EMEA platform complements our existing digital infrastructure investments and represents an important step for the Fund as we deepen our infrastructure capability in Europe.”
The transaction is anticipated to close in the last quarter of this year, subject to customary closing conditions.
“As data center demand continues to rapidly increase across EMEA, this investment will fuel Vantage’s ability to accelerate the growth of our environmentally friendly, large-scale data center footprint across the region and further deepen our relationships with customers as we enable them to grow and scale their businesses with reliable, efficient and sustainable data centers,” said Sureel Choksi, president and CEO at Vantage Data Centers.
