A huge 33 per cent chunk of Global Data Centre Group changed hands on Tuesday afternoon, with Aitken Murray Capital Partners and Shaw and Partners’ wholesale team understood to be managing the block trade.

There was only one shareholder with a big enough stake to be behind the sell-off, real estate funds manager 360 Capital.

The $84 million block was priced at $1.93 per share. At this price, the offer came at a 3.5 per cent discount to the $2 it was fetching on Tuesday.

The sale by 360 Capital comes a few weeks after it had signalled its intention to shift its major stake.

In mid-August it said it had commenced a formal sale process of its co-investment and management rights to its digital infrastructure interests, including Global Data Centre Group.

At the same time 360 Capital said it was rationalising its investments. It had already sold Ralton Asset Management, exited its public equity funds and was winding up the 360 Capital Active Value Fund, in order to focus on higher margin private equity investments.

Global Data Centre Group operates a portfolio of data centre investments. It invests directly into data centres and associated assets and typically takes equity positions of between $20 million and $50 million.

It has interests in 14 data centres, including those run by ETIX Everywhere, Fujitsu’s Perth data centre, AirTrunk and the Guam Data Centre.

Its interest in AirTrunk is thanks to its $25 million stake in the MIRA consortium that owns 88 per cent of the company.

David Yuile is the managing director of the investment manager and was previously the CEO of data centre provider Metronode Group and prior to that, was the CEO of Nextgen and AAPT.

Yuile was no stranger to a deal, having been involved in the sale of Metronode to Equinix for $1.04 billion in April 2018 and Vocus’ acquisition of Nextgen Networks for $806 million in 2016.

Article source: AFR, 7 September 2021