- The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (GS MBC) announced it has partnered with a seasoned management team — which is led by long-time data center industry executive Scott Peterson in order to form Global Compute Infrastructure LP
The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (GS MBC) — which is the primary center for the firm’s long-term principal investing activity for Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS) — announced it has partnered with a seasoned management team — which is led by long-time data center industry executive Scott Peterson in order to form Global Compute Infrastructure LP. Global Compute Infrastructure LP is a newly established global data center infrastructure platform.
The GS MBD has initially committed to fund up to $500 million of equity capital, primarily from its infrastructure fund West Street Infrastructure Partners III, LP (WSIP III) to enable approximately $1.5 billion in near-term investments deployed across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. And Global Compute intends to grow through a combination of acquisitions and organic development to serve customers in geographies with strong secular tailwinds and potential for significant data infrastructure growth.
Utilizing the experience and track record of the management team, Global Compute will focus on acquiring and developing facilities which can meet the growing compute, storage, connectivity, and colocation deployment needs of the world’s largest technology companies.
With over 18 years of data center industry experience and over 30 years in the real estate investment arena, Peterson is the former Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Digital Realty.
And during his tenure at DLR from 2004 to 2018, Peterson led all investment activity and was responsible for $17 billion in total deal volume across both M&A and organic development. Peterson is joined by a number of established executives in the data center space: fellow DLR co-founder Christopher Kenney as COO, and former senior DLR executive in EMEA Stephen Taylor as Head of Europe. Kenney was largely responsible for the expansion of DLR’s footprint internationally and Taylor led many of those initiatives throughout EMEA.
On October 17, 2020, Global Compute had signed an agreement to acquire ATM S.A., the leading data center and communications infrastructure business in Poland from a consortium of funds managed by MCI Capital and Mezzanine Management. Based in Warsaw, ATM’s world class data center assets, communication infrastructure footprint, customer base and strong reputation in the market provide Global Compute with an attractive entry point into the rapidly growing Central and Eastern European data center market. And Global Compute intends to build on ATM’s success and market leadership by positioning the company to service the growing deployment needs of both new and existing customers in Poland and the broader CEE region.
GS MBD was advised by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. And the Global Compute management team was advised by PJT Park Hill and Mayer Brown, while Global Compute was advised by Torch Partners, and White & Case LLP, with respect to the ATM SA acquisition.
KEY QUOTES:
“Goldman Sachs is the perfect partner for us as we pursue global investment opportunities in the data infrastructure space. Our combined global pedigrees and networks, together with GS MBD’s access to ample growth capital, will allow the Global Compute platform to not only serve the critical needs of our customers around the world, but also create and unlock value for our partners. Our initial investment in ATM S.A. is an ideal illustration of this collaboration. We are extremely enthusiastic about our partnership with Goldman Sachs enabling us to provide creative solutions for our global customers.”
— Scott Peterson, CEO of Global Compute
“We are incredibly excited about partnering with Scott and the Global Compute team. We see a tremendous opportunity in the data center space driven by increasing computing and storage demand and we believe the Global Compute team, backed by the global resources of Goldman Sachs, is uniquely positioned to deliver world class solutions to meet that demand.”
— Leonard Seevers, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
