Equinix Acquires IO UK's Data Center Business

  • M&A Deals
  • 06.02.2017 11:30 am

Equinix, Inc., the global interconnection and data center company, today announced that it has closed a transaction for the purchase of IO UK's data center operating business in Slough, United Kingdom. The facility, which will be renamed LD10, is in close proximity to Equinix's existing Sloughdata center campus and will help meet growing demand for digital infrastructure connectivity in the United Kingdom and Europe.  

IO UK's facility is a development phase asset, which opened for business in 2015. For the period to December 31, 2015, which is the last fully reported financial period, IO UK generated revenues of approximately $1.4 million. The agreement was signed on January 7, 2017 and the acquisition was completed on February 3, 2017.  

  • The UK is a global leader in cross-border connectivity. According to a new report by TechUK, the UK accounts for 11.5 per cent of global cross-border data flows in 2015-- compared with 3.9 per cent of global GDP and 0.9 per cent of global population. Cross-border data flows for the UK increased 28 times between 2005 and 2015 and are expected to grow another 5 times through 2021.[1] LD10 will be the latest UK data center asset on Equinix's global interconnection platform which will support this increase in data traffic and facilitate the movement of it worldwide.
  • The LD10 International Business ExchangeTM (IBX®) data center will be tethered to the other data centers (LD4, LD5, LD6) on the Equinix Slough campus, enabling customers to easily interconnect with one another across business ecosystems for maximum collaboration across digital supply chains. The Slough campus also offers low-latency connectivity to key markets from London such as 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt.
  • LD10 will add approximately 350 cabinets of sold capacity and a total colocation space of approximately 3,340 cabs once the facility is completely built out. The data center currently has a customer mix that maps closely to Equinix'sexisting base including financial services, enterprise, and networks. IO UK's Slough data center contains Baselayer Modular Data Center units, which Equinix will maintain and expand, as needed.
  • Today, Equinix's U.K. data centers are business hubs for nearly 1,300 companies and the Equinix Slough campus sits at the center of Europe's largest financial trading community, with approximately 25% of European equities trades originating at this location. Businesses can also access a broad range of more than 200 network service providers, as well as leading cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer and Google Cloud Platform which are available on the Equinix Cloud ExchangeTM.
  • With the current IT transformation underway, enterprises increasingly require low-latency network connectivity, access to cloud service providers in top global markets and interconnection with customers and partners across their digital supply chain to run their corporate IT. LD10 will enable Equinix customers to evolve from traditional businesses to "digital businesses" ? the need to globally interconnect with people, locations, cloud services and data.  Additionally, customers will have the opportunity to operate on an expanded global platform to process, store and distribute larger volumes of latency-sensitive data and applications at the digital edge, closer to end-users and local markets.
  • With this transaction Equinix now operates 147 IBX data centers in 40 markets, providing customers even more ways to connect with other businesses around the world on Platform EquinixTM.
  • RBC Capital Markets served as Equinix's financial advisor, and Slaughter and May acted as Equinix's external legal advisors in connection with this transaction.

Eric Schwartz, president, EMEA, Equinix:

"London remains a global economic engine, with leading enterprises and cloud service providers making it a primary hub for IT infrastructure. Adding additional interconnection and capacity in this market enables local and international customers to leverage Platform Equinix to meet their changing business needs - whether that is to connect to networks, clouds, or financial markets - Equinix is the place to be."

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