Credit: Vladimir Solomyani
ASX-listed Lendlease is making a US$1 billion play into the lucrative data centre market across Asia Pacific.
The property and infrastructure group has established a partnership with an unnamed 'large institutional' investor, putting 20 per cent of the investment in themselves, while the remaining 80 per cent will come from the investor partner.
Both parties will be making an initial equity commitment of US$500 million, but the investment funds will come up to be US$1 billion as a result of leverage, Lendlease said.
The joint-venture aims to target completed data centre facilities as well as new development opportunities across Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, which are all markets where Lendlease maintains a significant presence.
Specifically, Lendlease will provide investment, development and project management as well as construction, property management and leasing, the company said.
The business also has plans to work with data centre operators, hyper scale/cloud platforms, and other end users of data centres such as telecommunications companies, and financial services groups, Lendlease said in a response to ARN.
"A data centre platform is a strategic fit for the group, aligning with our targeted key trend of infrastructure, our telecommunications strategy and our integrated business model,” Lendlease Asia chief executive, Tony Lombardo, said.
“This partnership will enable us to leverage our track record of project managing, designing and building data centres with the strong growth potential for this sector, which is evolving into a mainstream real estate asset class."
