King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) has advised Brookfield Infrastructure on its purchase of AT&T's global data centre colocation operations in conjunction with King & Spalding LLP. The transaction, valued at $1.1 billion, includes 31 data centres across 5 continents.
The centres will be operated by a newly created and wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield, Evoque Data Center Solutions, which will now provide colocation services to more than 1,000 business customers, in partnership with AT&T's wider enterprise offering.
The telco's existing customer contracts, employees responsible for colocation operations, fixed assets, leases and certain owned facilities were included in the sale.
A truly global collaboration, the KWM team advising Brookfield was led by Partner, Adrian Perkins and included lawyers from the firm's Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore offices.
Commenting on the deal, Adrian Perkins said: "We are delighted to have leveraged our global platform and deep local expertise to assist Brookfield to complete this international transaction, which will see them enter into a strategic partnership with AT&T and become a part of its global colocation ecosystem. The data centres will be added to Brookfield's existing portfolio of more than $75 billion in global infrastructure assets."
In joining AT&T's global colocation ecosystem program, Brookfield will now contribute to the 350+ data centres available to business customers around the world.
The global KWM team included:
Sydney
- APAC Lead team: Adrian Perkins, Partner and Marie Vlassis, Solicitor
- Corporate, Commercial and M&A: Adrian Perkins, Partner, Alexander Galanos, Senior Associate, Marie Vlassis, Solicitor and Sam Monk, Solicitor
- FIRB: Malcolm Brennan, Partner
- Intellectual Property: Patrick Gunning, Partner and Nick Valentine, Senior Associate
- Environmental: Michael Causer, Partner and Christina Crossman, Solicitor
- Real Estate: Felicity Savage, Partner, Michelle Tat, Solicitor and Sean Park, Solicitor
- Employment: Andrew Gray, Partner and Annabelle Paxton-Hall, Solicitor
- Tax: Leah Ranie, Partner, Joanne Langford, Special Counsel and Victoria Lanyon, Senior Associate
Hong Kong
- Corporate and M&A: Hayden Flinn, Partner, Luke McCarthy, Senior Associate, Stephanie Courtice, Lawyer, Cathy Yu, Company Secretarial and April Chow, Company Secretarial Supervisor
- Intellectual Property and Employment: Peter Bullock, Partner
- Environmental and Real Estate: SiuNigor Chow, Partner, Ivy Man, Counsel, and Libby Young, Associate
Shanghai
- Corporate and M&A: Mark Schaub, Partner, Atticus Zhao, Senior Associate, Wang Jianyu, Associate and Guo Jiyu, Associate
- Intellectual Property: Cecilia Lou, Partner and Sun Haoguang, Senior Associate
- Data Privacy: Atticus Zhao, Senior Associate and Wang Jianyu, Associate
- Environmental: Mark Schaub, Partner
- Real Estate: William Jiang, Partner and Owen Ren, Senior Associate
- Employment: Lucy Lu, Partner and Ding Wu, Associate
- Tax: Ci Zhang, Partner
Singapore (in conjunction with Allen & Gledhill LLP):
- Corporate and M&A: John Sullivan, Partner and Elizabeth Blanch, Associate
- Commercial: Michael Lawson, Partner, Tian Xu, Senior Associate and Elizabeth Blanch, Associate
- Employment: Michael Lawson, Partner and Elizabeth Blanch, Associate
