CDC founder and boss Greg Boorer. Alex Ellinghausen
It’s the grand finale for the biggest data centre auction since AirTrunk’s $24b-plus sale.
Street Talk can reveal the $16 billion CDC Data Centres’ shareholders, the $9.7 billion dual listed Infratil and the $225 billion-plus Future Fund, are in the final throes of exercising their pre-emption rights and acquire an up-for-grabs minority stake.
The Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation has been running an auction for a 12.5 per cent slice of CDC via Barrenjoey.
As reported by this column, CDC fielded attention from Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), IFM Investors and Queensland’s Australian Retirement Trust.
Sources said CDPQ’s non-binding indicative offer, submitted late last year, was higher than the bid submitted by rival suitor, the $300 billion-plus Australian Retirement Trust, which had hired Macquarie Capital in hopes of repeating its success at AirTrunk.
The bids set off the pre-emption rights held by CDC’s part-owners Infratil and Future Fund.
As of Monday afternoon, the situation was unfolding in real-time with Infratil and Future Fund expected to decide before 6pm Sydney time whether to exercise their matching rights.
Should Infratil and Future Fund match the offer, as expected, CDPQ would be locked out of the fast-growing asset. Infratil currently owns about 48.25 per cent of CDC, while Future Fund and CSC own about 25 per cent each.
Founded by chief executive Greg Boorer in 2007 and chaired by Brett Chenoweth, CDC operates data centres in Australia and New Zealand, servicing customers who require large capacity and highly secure computing power.
It has built 302 megawatts of capacity across 20 data centres in Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney so far – and is aiming for 2.2GW capacity.
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