Germany's Aquila Capital has appointed Petter M. Tømmeraas as CEO of Aquila Capital’s data centre business, to drive its future growth and expansion plans.
Tømmeraas was previously senior vice president for data centre services at Basefarm, a major player in the Norwegian colocation market. He joins as CEO of Aquila's data centre business AQ Compute as of 1 October.
Tømmeraas will be based in Oslo, and report to Rolf Zarnekow, head of investment management real estate.
As CEO of Aquila Capital’s data centre business, Tømmeraas is charged with helping Aquila Capital continue to further professionalise the business, building on his experience in data centre operations, sales and development.
He will be responsible for expanding the business currently being built up in the Nordics and driving forward the move into other European countries, working closely with Carl von Hessen, head of data centre investments at Aquila Capital, and the AQ Compute team.
Roman Rosslenbroich, CEO and co-founder of Aquila Capital said: 'Aquila Capital contributes to the global energy transition by investing in clean energy and sustainable infrastructure.
'Using part of our clean energy capacity portfolio of more than 12GW for green data centres that are energy-efficient and reduce CO2 emissions will help many companies to mitigate their impact on the environment.
'Petter’s proven strategic mindset and remarkable expertise in the data centre industry will enable us to further strengthen this essential part of the infrastructure backbone in Europe. I’m looking forward to Petter helping us achieve our ambitious goals.'
Petter has more than 20 years of experience in the data centre industry, across different management positions in the Nordics, Europe and the US.
Prior to joining Basefarm, Tømmeraas worked as the chief sales officer for the Norwegian data centre company Green Mountain. He started working in the data centre services, telecommunication services and the managed services sector back in 1998 and is one of the founding members as well as current chairman of the board of the Norwegian Data Centre Industry.
Said Tømmeraas: 'I look forward to being part of the Aquila Capital family and joining the AQ Compute team, maintaining the business’ growth trajectory and together building a major sustainable data centre provider.
'Aquila Capital has a strong track record in initiating, developing and managing sustainable businesses along the entire value chain in Europe. Its expansion drive in the data centre space is matched by an unrivalled infrastructure and the financial resources to make it happen.'
Since 2012, Aquila Capital has been developing sustainable, energy-efficient real estate and logistics projects in Europe with a total transaction volume of more than €2 bn.
