Ares to enter LatAm digital infra market with GCP acquisition

Ares Management's announced acquisition of GLP Capital Partners’ international business, known as GCP International, represents the Los Angeles-based investment fund's first direct foray into Latin America’s growing digital infrastructure market.

The transaction is valued at US$3.7bn and excludes GLP’s China businesses.

“The acquisition will firmly establish Ares Real Estate as one of the largest global vertically integrated platforms and nearly doubles its assets under management to approximately US$96bn across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America,” the companies said in a joint statement last week.

GLP was founded by Ming Mei and Jeff Schwartz to operate as a developer and operator of logistics real estate, starting operations in Japan and China.

GCP International manages 23 funds supported and over 320 million square feet of industrial properties as of June 30.

As of June, GCP International had US$44bn of assets under management and local presence in Japan, Europe, the US, Brazil and Vietnam.

DATACENTERS

In recent years, GCP has sought to position itself as a global datacenter player, with hyperscale projects representing over 1GW of IT capacity announced for London, Tokyo, Osaka and São Paulo.

These operations are concentrated in Ada Infrastructure, launched in 2023 to tackle the markets of Japan, UK and Brazil. Ada reserved 850MW of IT capacity for the three countries upon launch, with 1.5GW put in a backlog of “total future capacity.” It included 100MW in two campuses located in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. 

At the time, Ada was also said to be exploring Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, in addition to the US, as future data center markets in the Americas.

The first Brazilian campus, in greater Rio de Janeiro, had 60MW total IT load at around 20MW per building. Comprising three single-storied buildings, the campus was projected to go live in 2025.

It was presented as a carrier-neutral campus in “close proximity to other major hyperscale datacenters.”

In São Paulo, the project was being developed in Campinas region and comprised 40MW IT load in two buildings, as well as 50MW of secured power. That campus was also due to go live in 2025.

The current status of these projects is not clear. 

GCP International’s sale to Ares, including its Ada Infrastructure business, is indicative of how much the digital infrastructure segment is heating up. 

The transaction will follow the separation of GCP International from GLP Capital Partners’ remaining business, which will remain independent and headquartered in Singapore, with a focus on investing in Greater China.

“Datacenter demand from both hyperscale and enterprise customers continues to accelerate with capital expenditure expected to materially exceed $1 trillion over the next three years, buoyed by global secular trends driven by the increase in data and compute needs, cloud migration, data security and most recently artificial intelligence,” the companies said in their statement.

Founded in 1997, Ares reported over US$447 billion of assets under management, with more than 2,950 employees operating across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, as of June end.

Ares secured financing from Morgan Stanley and Citigroup for the acquisition.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2025.