Natixis and BNP Paribas back data centre firm

Natixis and BNP Paribas have written a €250 million loan to finance Data4, a pan-European owner of data centre properties.

The six-year loan, which covers France, Italy and Luxembourg, will fund the firm’s growth through development and acquisition of new properties.

Data4 was created in 2006 as a joint venture between French telecommunications company Alcatel and US investment fund Colony Capital, now Colony NorthStar. The company designs, builds and operates its own data centres. Among its customers are large cloud operators, corporate and SME accounts.

Natixis and BNP Paribas acted as joint mandated lead arrangers and book-runners on the deal.

The growth of cloud computing has driven an expansion in Europe’s data centre market. EMEA investment volumes reached £400 million in 2016 compared with £180 million in 2015, and JLL expects a 20 percent rise in the UK this year. Take-up levels last year were unprecedented, at 155 megawatts, measured by power density per square metre, across the four major European data centre markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris, according to CBRE research.