Digital Realty to Acquire Interxion for $8.4B

Digital Realty and Interxion announced on Tuesday they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their businesses to create a leading global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions.  Under the terms of the agreement, Interxion shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.7067 Digital Realty shares per Interxion share.  The transaction values Interxion at approximately $93.48 per ordinary share or approximately $8.4 billion of total enterprise value, including assumed net debt.

San Francisco-based Digital Realty supports the data center, colocation and interconnection strategies of customers across the Americas, EMEA and APAC, ranging from cloud and information technology services, communications and social networking to financial services, manufacturing, energy, healthcare and consumer products, owns and operates more than 210 data centers in 35 cities and 14 counties, covering Hong Kong, Singapore, Osaka and Tokyo in Japan, Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and London in Europe, Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil, Toronto in Canada and 18 major cities in the U.S. 

Interxion is a leading provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services in Europe, serving a wide range of customers through 53 data centres11 European countries and 13 metro areas Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Dusseldorf,  Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Marseille, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, and Zurich. With over 700 connectivity providers, 21 European Internet exchanges, and most leading cloud and digital media platforms across its footprint, Interxion has created connectivity, cloud, content and finance hubs that foster growing customer communities of interest. Interxion's European business is highly complementary to Digital Realty's European footprint, given Digital Realty's established presence in London and Dublin. 

The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both Digital Realty and Interxion.  The transaction is expected to close in 2020 and is subject to the approval of Interxion and Digital Realty shareholders and other customary closing conditions.

Currently, Digital Realty's major interconnection business is in the US, the acquisition of Interxion will make Digital Realty a giant interconnection player in Europe.

In 2016, California-based Equinix completed the acquisition of another European data center giant TelecityGroup for $3.8 billion.

In August 2019, Chinese investor took fully control of Global Switch for a total of $7.7 billion. Global Switch, the U.K. data center operator founded in 1998, owns and operates 11 data centers totaling 340,000 square meters (3.7 million square feet) across Europe and Asia Pacific.

In the data center and colocation industry, Digital Realty, Equinix and Global Switch will be the leading providers in Europe and the world.