Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance advises Partners Group on acquisition of Australian data centre provider GreenSquareDC

Global law firm Clifford Chance has advised Partners Group in connection with its acquisition of Australian data centre provider GreenSquareDC. Partners Group, a leading global private markets firm, will invest up to AUD 1.2 billion to transform GreenSquareDC into a next-generation data centre platform in Australia.

Under the ownership of Partners Group, GreenSquareDC will become an owner, developer and operator of large-scale sustainable data centres across key Australian cities. GreenSquareDC recently acquired its first site in Sydney and has secured land options in several strategic locations across Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Reuben van Werkum, Director, Private Equity and Infrastructure M&A at Clifford Chance said, "Partners Group is a longstanding and greatly valued client of the firm. We are thrilled to be supporting Partners Group on the establishment of such a significant data centre platform. We are seeing the digital infrastructure sector booming, with strong demand for quality sites to support the growth of AI and cloud computing. GreenSquareDC is in a great position to respond to this demand."

He added: "Data centre platforms are at the heart of Clifford Chance's sector focus areas in energy transition, infrastructure and digital industries. This transaction demonstrates our significant multi-practice expertise in the digital infrastructure space and our capability in leveraging this expertise and global relationships to deliver exceptional onshore results for our clients."

Partner Andrew Crook and Reuben van Werkum were part of a Clifford Chance team that included counsel Jenny Han, senior associates Benedict Waterfall and Cecilia Chan, associates Tegan Kelly, Libby Berger, Suryansh Gupta and graduate lawyer Isabelle Ellerker. Counsel Rebecca Elgar and associate Chloe Sherrington advised on the real estate aspects of the transaction, including in relation to the acquisition of the platform's seed asset in Sydney.

Partners Group has invested over USD 4 billion in data centres since 2021 and will apply its platform-building approach to scale GreenSquareDC, supporting the management team in acquiring sites, building a pipeline of future opportunities, establishing customer and supplier relationships and implementing operational capabilities.

Clifford Chance has advised on some of the largest and most significant transactions involving digital infrastructure both regionally in the Asia Pacific, and globally. These include advising Yondr Group on its US$900 million project financing for landmark hyperscale data centre in Malaysia, the AU$2.12 billion sale of Global Switch Australia, the US$3.9 billion financing of Dito's 4G and 5G telecommunications network development in the Philippines and  AdaniConneX's data centre asset portfolio in India.