News

Digital Realty sells 8 European Data Centres to Singaporean-based Ascendas Reit

News

Digital Realty, a US-based Reit with over 200 facilities worldwide, has announced the sale of 11 of its European Data Centre facilities to Singapore-based Ascendas Reit for USD $680 million.

Details

It is Ascendas’ first foray into the European market. Three facilities are based around the established London Data Centre cluster (with one in Manchester), three are around Amsterdam & also Paris, with one in Geneva.

Three of the facilities are colocation based, whilst the remainder have turnkey (dedicated) clients including BT, Equinix, HSBC, Bouygues Telecom, Interoute & euNetworks. Ascendas Reit is to use Digital Realty to continue to manage these facilities for a 12 month period before appointing its own property manager.

Significance

Digital Realty is to use the funds received to reduce debts and enable future Data Centre investments. Ascendas sees future growth from the key FLAP markets (in this case London, Amsterdam & Paris) as the rationale behind the purchase.

In the bigger picture the exchange of assets highlights the trends taking place in the Data Centre market:

• The attractiveness of established Data Centre assets as an investment opportunity post COVID-19
• The strength of Asia Pacific players as new Data Centre investors
• The trading of assets by the largest Data Centre Providers - taking advantage of increased asset valuations
• The continued entry of new global Data Centre Providers into Europe