Blackstone has announced that it will buy QTS Realty Trust for $10 billion and take the data centre operator private. This will be the largest acquisition of its kind surpassing Digital Realty’s $8.4 billion acquisition of Interxion and Jiangsu Shagang Group’s $8 billion purchase of Global Switch. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2021 following a 40 day ‘go shop’ period.
Kansas-based QTS is an attractive proposition as the seventh largest data centre provider in the Americas and one of the top players in a strong growth market. QTS has 26 sites across North America and two in Europe (the Netherlands). New facilities were opened last year in Atlanta and Oregon, taking their total data centre footprint to over seven million square feet. Plans have recently been announced for an additional 1 million square foot facility in Atlanta, Georgia.
Blackstone will take on QTS’s debt, which is included in the $10bn total figure, and the deal could unlock additional capital to support the company’s expansion into Asia and further growth in Europe.
