JLL advises on £100m sale and leaseback of two prime data centres in West London

LONDON, 7 February 2022 – JLL has advised a large financial services business on the £100m sale and leaseback of two prime data centres in West London to UK-based specialist data centres developer and operator Kao Data. JLL provided a full suite of services to the seller, including investment sale advisory, transaction management, colocation lease & SLA negotiation, consulting and transition management.

Totaling 300,000 sq ft, both assets are fully fitted and have a long-term anchor lease from a large financial services business. The data centres are uniquely located in West London’s established data centre market and benefit from proximity to central London and reliable access to the power grid.

West London data centre market, in particular Slough, is one of the largest and most mature data markets in Europe. JLL estimates that the total IT power of West London accounts for over half of total data centre supply of London. Slough itself is the world’s second largest data centre hub and it's estimated that data centres account for nearly a quarter of the total trading estate.

Jonathan Kinsey, Head of EMEA Data Center Services, JLL, said: “Data centre investment worldwide has intensified during the pandemic, which has served to highlight a long-coming shift to an online life that requires data for everything from streaming services to buying groceries. All that data flows through data centres. For investors, this increasing reliance is serving to boost the perceived stability of the once-niche sector.

We’re delighted to have supported our client on this significant transaction, which is indicative of continued growth trajectory of data centres and the resilient performance of sector.”

Luke Jackson, Director, Data Centres Capital Markets, EMEA, JLL, added: “The digitisation of our world continues to grow at an exponential rate and with it demand for data usage. This transaction highlights the increasing attractiveness of data centres among investors and the opportunity for corporate owner occupiers to monetise their assets to release liquidity and optimise their portfolios to support post-pandemic business plans.”

“With this move we are excited to be strengthening our high-performance footprint across the UK, and establish ourselves within the world’s second largest data centre hub," said Lee Myall, CEO, Kao Data. “Its launch will offer data-intensive enterprises in the highly sought after West London Availability Zone the opportunity to benefit from significant new capacity, and set a new standard for data centre sustainability.”

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About Kao Data:

Founded in 2014, Kao Data develop and operate high performance data centres for advanced computing. With hyperscale-inspired facilities east and west of London, we provide enterprise, cloud, HPC and AI customers with a world-class home for their compute.

Designed, engineered, and operated by one of the industry’s most respected teams, our carrier neutral data centres offer the highest calibre OCP-Ready and DGX-Ready environments. We are the UK’s home for the most demanding computing infrastructure, with our east of London facility in Harlow housing NVIDIA’s Cambridge-1, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer. This is complimented by state-of-the-art facilities in west London, which combined, deliver a data centre footprint of 55MW, all powered by 100% renewable energy.

Backed by leading international investors, Kao Data is one of the UK’s most pioneering data centre developers and operators. We underpin our customers’ mission-critical workloads with high performance infrastructure, operations and compute efficiencies, representing the future in industrial scale computing. kaodata.com