Through its subsidiary Principal Real Estate, the manager has launched a fund of 450 million euros for the acquisition of data centers in Europe. The Principal European Data Center Fund has raised €155 million at first closing, which has been signed by seven investors, including asset managers, pension funds and insurance companies from France, Germany, Spain and Malaysia.
Depending on the fund statuses, at least 60% will be allocated to the European markets of Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The remaining 40% will go to secondary markets, such as Spain, Italy or Switzerland.
Principal Real Estate has global experience in data center investing and closed its first US data center closed-end fund in June 2021, which was oversubscribed by €471.4 million. Since entering the data center market in 2007, Principal Real Estate has committed more than €1.75 billion in data center acquisitions and developments.
Paul Lewis, Director of European Data Centers at Principal Real Estate, comments: “Data centers will continue to be attractive investment opportunities due to their diversification benefits and strong risk/return profile, and we continue to believe there is intrinsic value in data center assets standing in Europe's primary and secondary markets, given long-term structural tailwinds supporting the sector."
