The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has finalised an agreement to take a 70 per cent share in Leighton Telecommunications, including Nextgen Networks, Metronode and Infoplex.
The three businesses announced they will come together under a single corporate brand called Nextgen Group. Leighton Holdings will retain a 30 per cent share in the business. Leighton managing director of the telecommunications, Peter McGrath, will be CEO and the existing Australian senior management team will remain.
The agreement was announced in late March, six months after Leighton put the telecom assets up for sale. When the deal was still under negotiation, Leighton stated that the sale price values 100 per cent of the company's telco assets at $885 million.
“We believe we will benefit from both Teachers’ investment and the continued support of shareholder Leighton Holdings,” said McGrath.
“As we begin a new era under joint-ownership, it is the right time to structure our business for the future. We will be looking to organise ourselves around our key customer groups, to make it easier for them to access everything they need from us via their account manager. This will allow us to be more flexible and nimble in the competitive marketplace.
“We are keen to deliver on Australia’s key data requirements well into the future by partnering with our clients and investing in industry leading networks, data centres and cloud infrastructure.”
Nextgen Networks owns an 18,000km fibre optic network in Australia; Metronode operates six data centres and is currently planning or constructing four more; and Infoplex sells private cloud and managed hosting services.
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