Australia’s Lendlease has partnered with an unnamed institution to invest US$1bn (€882.7m) in data centres across the Asia-Pacific region.
Lendlease said it would fund 20% of the partnership, with its partner funding the remaining 80%.
The partners will initially invest US$500mn, using leverage to give the platform capacity to spend up to A$1 billion.
Lendlease said it would acquire completed assets and seek development opportunities to build new data centres in all markets in which it has a significant presence. These include Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.
Lendlease’s CEO Asia, Tony Lombardo, based in Singapore, said: “A data centre platform is a strategic fit for the group, aligning with our targetted key trend of infrastructure, our telecommunications strategy and our integrated business model.
“This partnership will enable us to leverage our track record of project managing, designing and building data centres with strong growth potential for the sector, which is evolving into a mainstream real estate asset class.”
Lendlease will manage development and construction, and, on completion, will manage the properties and the investment.
Commencement of the partnership is subject to relevant regulatory approvals.
Demand for data centres is being driven by accelerated growth in what is known as “multi-cloud” adoption around the world, and will be further accelerated with the roll-out of 5G, according to a JLL report on the global data centre outlook.
The report describes Singapore as the hub for data centres in Asia-Pacific, with 44MW under construction.
The partnership announced today is Lendlease’s second venture in the fast-growing data centre/telecom sector.
In October 2017, Lendlease and Softbank each committed US$200m equity to launch LendLease Towers, to partner with major US carriers in developing and owning telecom infrastructure assets in the US.
