Digital Realty To Acquire Interxion For $8.4bn

Data centre consolidation sees US real estate giant acquire Europe’s largest colocation provider, Interxion

Digital Realty has announced it is to acquire Europe’s largest colocation provider Interxion, after the later accepted a bid of $8.4 billion from the US firm.

The deal will essentially be a share swop, with Interxion shareholders receiving a fixed exchange ratio of 0.7067 Digital Realty shares per Interxion share. The transaction values Interxion at approximately $93.48 per share (or $8.4 billion).

The deal had been on the cards for some time. Back in 2016 for example it was reported that Digital Realty had been mulling a bid for Interxion.

data centre
Interxion’s Paris 7 data centre on rue Rateau © Google Maps

Data centre consolidation

According to the firms, the combined company “will be uniquely positioned to meet the growing global demand from cloud platforms, service providers and enterprises seeking colocation, hybrid cloud and hyperscale data centre solutions.”

Indeed, the deal will see a huge expansion of Digital Realty’s European presence, and will mean that the combined firm will have 260 data centers worldwide.

“This strategic and complementary transaction builds upon Digital Realty’s established foundation of serving market demand for colocation, scale and hyperscale requirements in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific and leverages Interxion’s European colocation and interconnection expertise, enhancing the combined company’s capabilities to enable customers to solve for the full spectrum of data center requirements across a global platform,” said Digital Realty CEO A. William Stein.

“As part of Digital Realty, stakeholders will have the opportunity to continue to reap the benefits of the value that we have created via the communities of interest approach in our carrier- and cloud-neutral European data center portfolio,” said Interxion CEO David Ruberg, who will also head the EMEA operation.

It is understood that Digital Realty intends to keep the Interxion name for its European business, branding it ‘Interxion, a Digital Realty company.’

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