Lender ING said on Monday that it has closed a £450 mln (€504 mln) syndicated infrastructure loan with Ark Data Centres, a major data centre operator in the UK.
Building on its role as one of the mandated lead arrangers for Ark’s £300 mln senior loan facilities closed in 2018, ING acted as bookrunner, mandated lead arranger, sole underwriter and hedge co-ordinator for the new loan.
The new financing arranged by ING is to partially fund capex related to Ark’s continued expansion as well as refinance the existing £300 mln facility. With an oversubscribed book, ING expanded Ark’s lending syndicate from 5 to 11 banks. Existing lenders Lloyds, NIBC, HSBC and AIB all continued their relationship with Ark, while Crédit Agricole, Investec, HCOB, Sabadell, KommunalKrediet and Siemens Bank joined the syndicate as new lenders. Lloyds, HSBC, Crédit Agricole, Investec and HCOB acted alongside ING as mandated lead arrangers.
Sicco Boomsma, director at ING, said, 'The upsizing of Ark’s banking syndicate not only bears testament to Ark’s credit strength, but also to growing appetite for good quality data centre assets as regional investors have begun to appreciate the mission critical nature of data centre assets.'
2019 has been a strong year for ING, with several data centre transactions with players including EdgeConnex, Equinix, Green Data Centres and NLDC/TDCG. Globally, ING has done more than 100 data centre financing structures since starting the coverage of this asset class.
