Goldman Sachs is looking for a partner to finance a data centre development in Slough, to the west of London, with a £640 million loan, CoStar News can reveal.
The US investment bank has been lined up to provide the finance, but finds the size of the loan too big to take down itself, a source familiar with the situation said.
The data centre development at the site of Akzo Nobel’s former paint factory at Wexham Road is budgeted at around £800 million and is being carried out by Yondr, a developer and owner-operator of data centres. Yondr is owned by Cathexis Holdings.
In 2021, Goldman financed a large data centre development for Cathexis in Middenmeer, a village some 60 kilometres north of Amsterdam, the source said. Cathexis developed a data centre for Google at Tussenmeer 8. The tech company moved in at the end of 2020. It said at the time, the investment volume was €500 million, which took its investments in the Netherlands to €2.5 billion.
Land Registry records show that a €525 million senior and €250 million mezzanine loan were secured against the property in August 2021. A Luxembourg vehicle from Cathexis is listed as mortgagor while loan servicer Glas Trust Corporation is listed as mortgagee, performing the role as security agent.
Yondr said in 2021 that it planned to develop the largest data centre campus in Slough. The initial phase of the development would include a 30MW facility to be ready for service by the first quarter of 2023. The data centre campus would have a total capacity of 100MW when fully developed.
“The M4 corridor connects London to the heart of Britain and is home to some of the world’s leading organisations. Being located in Slough will allow us to serve our clients in the most sought after metro in the United Kingdom,” said Paul Hood, managing director of operations, EMEA at Yondr Group at the time. “We are excited to bolster our growing global presence with the addition of Slough, while continuing to transform the data center industry.”
Goldman Sachs declined to comment and Yondr did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.