Lumen closes US$2.7bn sale of LatAm ops to Stonepeak

Lumen Technologies announced the closure of the sale of its Latin American operation to US private equity firm Stonepeak for US$2.7bn.

The new operation will be called Cirion and will operate as an independent portfolio company of Stonepeak, Lumen said in a release.

Stonepeak plans to invest in Cirion to expand the network across the entire region and position the platform for continued long-term growth.

"This divestiture is an important step in achieving Lumen's strategic goals as we sharpen our focus on key strategic assets while also providing our LatAm employees and customers an opportunity for continued growth," said Lumen CEO Jeff Storey.

"We share Jeff's excitement about Cirion's opportunity in Latin America, given the platform's strong footprint and ambition to continue expanding its fiber and datacenter network across the entire region," said Andrew Thomas, Stonepeak managing director and co-head of communications.

In June, Leonardo Barbero, senior VP of products and access management at Lumen Latin America, told BNamericas that the company has an “ambitious investment plan" underway to expand datacenters, long-haul networks, metropolitan networks, CDNs and submarine cables.

Stonepeak named Lumen's Latin America regional president, Facundo Castro, as the new CEO of Cirion.

Lumen and Cirion have established reciprocal reselling and network arrangements that leverage each other’s fiber footprints, datacenters and other network assets, according to the release.

Cirion will now manage a communications platform in Latin America including subsea cables, terrestrial fiber and datacenters.