Global real estate investment trust American Tower is buying US data firm CoreSite Realty in a $10.1bn (€8.7bn) deal.
The transaction – which has been approved by directors of the NYSE-listed companies – includes the assumption and/or repayment of CoreSite’s existing debt at closing.
CoreSite’s assets consist of 25 data centres, 21 cloud on-ramps and over 32,000 interconnections in eight major US markets.
American Tower expects to leverage its financial position to further accelerate CoreSite’s development pipeline in the US, ”while also evaluating the potential for international expansion in the data centre space”.
“By combining the capabilities, talent and resources of American Tower and CoreSite, the combined company will be even better equipped to deliver superior service and expanded solutions to customers,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s CEO, said: “We expect the combination of our leading global distributed real estate portfolio and CoreSite’s high quality, interconnection-focused data centre business to help position American Tower to lead in the 5G world.
“As the convergence of wireless and wireline networks accelerates and classes of communications infrastructure further align, we anticipate the emergence of attractive value creation opportunities within the digital infrastructure ecosystem.”
CoreSite’s CEO, Paul Szurek, said: “The combined company will be ideally positioned to address the growing need for convergence between mobile network providers, cloud service providers, and other digital platforms as 5G deployments emerge and evolve.
“In addition, we expect the enhanced scale and further geographic reach to provide a platform for the combined company to accelerate its growth trajectory and expand into additional US metro areas, as well as internationally, leveraging American Tower’s extensive presence across the globe.”
To read the digital edition of the latest IPE Real Assets magazine click here.
