DealMakerz – 2nd September 2019
David and Simon Reuben, via their company Aldersgate Investments, have sold their final stake in Global Switch – a major owner, operator and developer of large scale, carrier and cloud neutral multi-customer data centres across Europe and Asia Pacific.
The buyers, China’s Jiangsu Shagang Group, paid £1.8bn ($2.2bn) for their final 24% holding. Shagang Group now has a 49.9% share of Global Switch putting the business entirely under Chinese ownership. The process of selling the business began in 2016 when the Reubens sold a 49% stake, followed by two further stakes in 2018, to Chinese investors.
The Reuben Brothers bought Global Switch as a loss-making business in 2007 and have turned the business around since. Global Switch now has 12 data centres in Europe and Asia Pacific with four more under construction and plans to double the total power capacity of its facilities.
The report says that the total sale value of the business has been £6.3bn (around $7.7bn). It will be interesting to see what if any plans David and Simon Reuben have for reinvesting this money going forward.