Partner quoted in Partnerships Bulletin on investment in data centers

London Real Estate Partner Barry Gross recently contributed to an article in Partnerships Bulletin Q3 2021. The article focused on the incredibly active data centers sector, historically known to be a private sector enterprise, but as technology becomes a core part of infrastructure it may be time for the public sector to join in. The article looks at PPPs and how the versatility of the asset is one of the driving factors behind the recent interest in the data centers market. Gross comments, “there is a lot of interest from a lot of different investors in that market – so everything from your private equity to infrastructure funds to ultra-high-net-worth individuals are all looking at the data center sector”. While there are already a few instances of PPPs in principle across the UK, the suitability of the model has yet to be realized. And many questions still remain as to why the sector needs PPPs if there is so much cash around, though the benefits for authorities to build data centers have been a relatively hard sell in the past.  However this could be set to change with the Edge, a theoretical peripheral series of nodes connected as secondary points to the data center hubs in big cities like London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.