Latham & Watkins advises Macquarie Asset Management in record data center deal

Latham & Watkins has represented Macquarie Asset Management on behalf of two of its privately managed infrastructure funds and its co-invest partners, on the sale of Aligned Data Centers to a consortium of investors comprising the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), MGX, and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners. The transaction implies an enterprise value of approximately US$40 billion, marking the largest data center transaction ever completed globally, according to the sources.

Under Macquarie Asset Management’s ownership, Aligned evolved from two operational facilities in Dallas and Phoenix, totaling 85 MW of critical capacity, to a leading hyperscale data center platform with over 5 GW of capacity across 50 data centers under management and development throughout the United States, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia.

The company also achieved several market firsts, including the first-ever green data center securitization and first sustainability-linked financing for a data center platform.

Latham & Watkins advised Macquarie Asset Management on the transaction with a multidisciplinary, cross-border team spanning corporate, tax, regulatory, and other key practice areas:

The corporate deal team was led by New York partners David Beller (pictured bottom left) and Jason Webber (pictured bottom right), with associates Daniel Weissman, Sofia Skara, Emma Giusto, and Rheem Brooks.

The Latin America corporate/M&A team was also USA-based, led by partner Tony Del Pino in New York (pictured upper left) and Washington, D.C. partner Carlos Ardila (pictured upper right).