Macquarie Asset Management, the world's largest infrastructure asset manager, has entered into a real estate partnership with Japanese conglomerate NTT, covering wholesale data center development in Europe and North America.
This means Macquarie will have the opportunity to invest real estate capital alongside NTT, to support the latter’s expansion in key data center markets.
“We see this as a very attractive sector to invest in, given the exponential growth of global data and computing and the significant capital requirements for operators to keep up with user demand,” said Brett Robson, global head of real estate for Macquarie Asset Management.
“We are delighted to partner with NTT, a leading data center operator, that has a global footprint and an exceptionally strong development and operational history.”
The allure of wholesale data centers
NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies by revenue, established in 1952 and still part-owned by the Japanese government.
Today, the NTT group operates two data center subsidiaries: NTT Ltd. is in charge of the traditional retail colocation business, built over years through acquisition of brands ike RagingWire in the US, Netmagic in India, and e-shelter in Germany. The entire network consists of more than 140 data centers, serving 196 countries and regions, all linked by its own fiber backbone called the Arcstar Universal One.
Meanwhile, the recently established NTT Global Data Centers Corp – or NTT GDC – handles centralized global construction, management, and equipment purchasing for NTT group’s data centers.
Overall, NTT says it has more than 1,300MW of data center capacity under management today.
The partnership with Macquarie will give the company easy access to the funding it needs to continue expanding in Europe and the US.
“NTT has ambitious plans to build and operate more data centers which our strategic partnership with Macquarie, a globally recognized, long-term and experienced financial investment partner, will allow us to achieve,” said Masaaki Moribayashi, president and board director for NTT Ltd.
