Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s (MSIM) global private infrastructure investment platform has acquired a 70% stake in a €764m data centre portfolio from Altice France.

Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (MSIP) is acquiring the majority interest in UltraEdge, a French data centre company to be formed and comprising 257 data centres plus office space currently operated by Altice France’s subsidiary SFR.

The transaction involves MSIP partnering with Altice France to own UltraEdge with a plan to continue upgrading the infrastructure and increasing the density of the portfolio.

UltraEdge will be the first nationwide independent distributed data centre operator in France with more than 45MW of installed capacity and around 33,000sqm of owned office space distributed across the country including in key metropolitan areas.

Altice France said the decision to sell its non-core assets is part of the firm’s strategy to improve its financial health. This move will reduce the company’s debt and make it more financially stable. Additionally, the company is investing heavily in upgrading and expanding its data centre infrastructure, allowing Altice France to provide better telecommunication services to its customers.

Yacine Saidji, managing director and co-head of Europe for Morgan Stanley Investment Management, said: “We believe the opportunity to create an independent and distributed edge colocation provider, benefiting from access to SFR’s nationwide fibre infrastructure in France, makes UltraEdge a very attractive investment for MSIP.”

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