Digital Bridge to acquire Vantage Data Centers for $1 billion

UTAH - Digital Bridge Holdings LLC, a firm that invests in data centers, has agreed to acquire Vantage Data Centers Management Co LLC from buyout firm Silver Lake Partners for well over $1 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The deal is the latest sign of consolidation in the data center sector. Industry players are seeking scale to cope with U.S. businesses' burgeoning demand for data and video, which is fueling a revival in fiber optic services and data storage. The deal will be announced once it closes, probably in the coming weeks, the three sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is not public. Vantage could not be reached for comment, while Digital Bridge and Silver Lake declined to comment. Vantage Data Centers, based in Santa Clara, California, was formed in 2010 when Silver Lake acquired a data center campus formerly owned by Intel Corp. Vantage also operates a data center campus in Quincy, Washington. The transaction marks the latest acquisition by Boca Raton, Florida-based Digital Bridge of a data center company. The firm, which owns and operates telecommunications infrastructure companies, has raised more than $4 billion in debt and equity from institutional investors, corporations and family offices since it was founded in 2013. In July it acquired DataBank Ltd, a private Dallas-based data center company for an undisclosed sum in the "hundreds of millions of dollars." Many technology companies have turned to vendors such as Vantage to host and maintain their servers in a bid to cut costs. Telecommunications firms such as Verizon Communications Inc and CenturyLink Inc divested their data center portfolios last year. Private equity firms or companies that specialize in data centers, such as Equinix Inc and Digital Realty Trust Inc, have been active buyers of assets. Reuters first reported Vantage was up for sale in October. -Reuters