The deal sees the US private equity firm acquire Singapore’s GK Goh Holdings share of the London-based company, with Stonepeak pledging to make up to $500 million available for investment in euNetworks.
Stonepeak represents around $11.3 billion worth of investments – mainly made up of companies that are in oil and gas based in the US. One of the few telecoms shareholdings are Denver-based data centre company Cologix, in which it acquired a majority stake in February 2017, also for $500 million.
In 2014 Stonepeak invested in wireless infrastructure company Digital Bridge, and the following year Stonepeak and Digital Bridge together led a $1.4 billion recapitalisation of carrier-neutral wireless networking company ExteNet Systems.
“euNetworks has distinguished itself in an increasingly connected society where fibre is core to communications infrastructure. We're delighted to partner with Brady and the team,” said Trent Vichie, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stonepeak.
euNetworks owns and operates dense fibre-based metropolitan networks in 14 cities, connected by an intercity backbone covering 49 cities in 15 countries, stretching from Dublin to Marseille to Helsinki.
These networks directly connect into over 300 data centres and more than 1,300 further cell towers, cable landing stations and enterprise buildings. The company said that “for Stonepeak the investment represents an ideal platform to enter the bandwidth infrastructure market”.
“We're very pleased to have closed our transaction,” said Brady Rafuse, chief executive officer of euNetworks. “I genuinely believe the combination of Stonepeak, Columbia and many of our previous investors coming together as the new euNetworks represents a fantastic opportunity for our customers, our people, our partners and the communities in which we operate.”
