ALBAWABA - The American private equity firm Blackstone made the announcement on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement to acquire the data center operator AirTrunk, located in Sydney, as of the firm's aim to acquire AI assets in the Asia-Pacific region.
The acquisition, which is the largest leveraged buyout of the year so far, occurs at a point where dealmaking driven by private equity is beginning to recover following a surge in financing costs in 2022 and 2023 that made financing buyouts more costly and difficult to close large acquisitions, as reported by Yahoo.
In conjunction with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), the alternative asset manager is in the process of purchasing AirTrunk from Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP).
In a statement released on Wednesday, CPP Investments said that after the transaction is finalized, it will have a 12 percent stake in AirTrunk.
Since that foreign parties are purchasing the asset, the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) must approve the AirTrunk deal. The acquisition, valued at $16.1 billion, is regarded as the biggest buyout in Australia so far this year and among the largest in recent history.
Blackstone President Jon Gray commented that the deal is the firm’s “largest investment in the Asia Pacific region,” adding that “AirTrunk is another vital step as Blackstone seeks to be the leading digital infrastructure investor in the world across the ecosystem, including data centres, power and related services.”
