A&O is advising Liberty Global on its Edge data centre joint venture with Digital Colony Partners

AtlasEdge will deliver services via an extensive network of facilities located close to consumer and enterprise end users, the “edge” of the network. The company aims to serve the growing demand from cloud providers, streaming services and enterprises for high-performance, scalable and secure facilities through which they can distribute low-latency applications and services such as 5G, gaming, IOT and edge compute.

Liberty Global will contribute digital infrastructure assets, including its technical real estate portfolios. Liberty Global will also provide strategic and operational support to the business. Digital Colony will provide operating expertise, strategic direction and capital to support the significant growth and consolidation opportunity in edge co-location services across Europe.

The creation of the proposed JV is subject to receipt of customary regulatory and merger control approvals. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2021.

The A&O team is being led by London corporate partner Alex Tilley, supported by Sam Brooks, Laura Millward-Lynch, Viren Bhojwani and Mohsen Mostafavi. Specialist commercial and real estate advice is being provided by TMT counsel Andrew Kenning with support from Prabhjot Dhami, Manpreet Kaur and Lauren Mitchell. Antitrust and foreign investment advice is provided by counsel Tom Masterman with support from Jess Bowring and Jack Ashfield.