Investment firms Marguerite and Asterion Industrial Partners are to reinvest in and merge Irideos and Retelit.
Asterion previously acquired a 78.4 percent stake in Irideos S.p.a from Fondi Italiani per le Infrastrutture Sgr (F2i) through its vehicle Marbles S.p.a.
This week Asterion announced it had acquired Marguerite’s 19.6 percent stake in Irideos, with Marguerite re-investing the proceeds into the Asterion-owned Marbles vehicle. The Marbles holding company will then own 100 percent of Retelit S.p.a. and 98 percent of Irideos.
The deal is subject to the usual conditions and expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed.
Asterion and Marguerite then aim to consolidate and merge Retelit’s and Irideos, creating an Italian wholesale access and B2B connectivity provider with a network of 42,000 km of fiber and 34 data centers.
“We are excited by the prospect of joining Asterion to create a market leader in the Italian telecom B2B sector, capitalizing on synergies and value creation opportunities through the combination of these two companies,” said Michael Dedieu, Managing Partner at Marguerite. “We’re investing in the platform aggregating Irideos and Retelit as we believe this combination will create a stronger player and create additional value.”
Asterion acquired and took Retelit private last year, after previously acquiring a 24 percent stake in October 2020. Founded in 1999, the company offers wholesale access, B2B connectivity, and ICT solutions and services via a network of 15,000 km of fiber – including metropolitan networks in the 14 largest cities – and 19 data centers (18 across Italy and 1 in Innsbruck, Austria).
Irideos (formerly 2i Fiber) offers connectivity, data center, and cloud solutions through a network of 27,000 km of fiber optic routes along motorways, the Adriatic coast, metro areas, and 15 data centers across Milan, Trento, Verona, and Rome. The company’s main data center is located at its Avalon Campus near Milan; it broke ground on a third Avalon facility in the city last year.
Guido Mitrani, Founding Partner at Asterion Industrial Partners, said: “We are delighted to have Marguerite joining us in this opportunity to create the largest alternative wholesale access and B2B connectivity provider in Italy, leveraging our industrial knowledge. This platform further complements our exposure to Italy and the telecom sector and further aligns us with our aim of helping to bridge the digital gap in our core geographies, while providing a critical foundation for the development of the Gigabit society.”
Marguerite has been an investor in Irideos since 2017. Asterion acquired a majority stake in Irideos in July for a reported $400 million and announced the merger plans.
Asterion also owns Nabiax, a Latin American and Spanish-focused data center firm. Nabiax’s portfolio of facilities is based on a portfolio of data centers acquired from Telefónica.
Last year Marguerite's Marguerite II fund bought Swedish colo firm Conapto.
