Contact: Mark Fontecchio
Western Europe has seen landmark datacenter consolidation thus far this year – a trend we predict will continue in the near future. Data regulation requirements, increasing demand for high-quality datacenter space and latency concerns are three factors driving M&A in the datacenter market in 2015.
A lot is happening in the Western European multi-tenant datacenter (MTDC) market outside of the big deals, with smaller regional players looking to grow their service portfolios and extend their reach across the continent with smaller facilities outside of major metros. We expect to continue to see increased M&A activity throughout Europe as the region recovers from the economic crisis.
According to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, there were 19 datacenter hosting acquisitions in the first five months of 2015, compared with just seven in the same period last year. What’s more striking is the deal value – some $4.7bn this year compared with $1.2bn in all of 2014. To be sure, the deal value in Western Europe this year is inflated by Equinix’s $3.6bn reach for TelecityGroup. But datacenter M&A in the region has always been dominated by oversized transactions. In 2012-14, single acquisitions accounted for 78%, 57% and 68% of total deal value.
Read more about Western European MTDC in our recent market review.
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