Major Data Center Operator Reportedly Up For Sale
The owners of Global Switch, a London-based data center operator and developer, are mulling a sale that could value the company at $10.9B, according to a report.
The majority owner of Global Switch is Chinese steelmaker Jiangsu Shagang Group Co., with backing from Avic Trust Co., and an investment management trust. Global Switch operates large data centers across Europe and Asia, with a total footprint of about 390,000 square meters, and customers that include government agencies and financial institutions, according to Bloomberg.
Discussions are preliminary and prospective buyers haven’t been named, but if a sale took place, it would likely be among the largest-ever data center deals.
Last year was a bumper year for data center M&A. Total deal volume for 2020 crossed the $30B mark in mid-December, according to Synergy Research.
That number was boosted by a handful of large deals, including Digital Realty’s $8.4B acquisition of Interxion. Synergy identified five other data center deals valued at over $1B that closed in 2020.
A sale of Global Switch would follow an abandoned effort in 2019 to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, shortly after Jiangsu Shagang Group bought a 24% stake in the company. That transaction placed Global Switch’s value at roughly $7.5B.
Due to weak market sentiment, the IPO effort was scuttled in September 2019. In a statement at the time, the company said it intended to “proceed with an IPO at the earliest opportunity.”
