Leighton offloads telco assets for $620m

Leighton Holdings will sell a majority stake in its fibre networking and data centre businesses to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in a $620 million deal.

Leighton announced its intention to sell what it considered “non-core assets” last September and began exclusive negotiations with the Canadian fund last month.

The companies today announced that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan would buy 70 percent of Leighton’s Nextgen Networks, Infoplex and Metronode businesses.

The three businesses were valued at a total of $885 million.

Nextgen and Metronode have won some big public sector deals, with the former operating the Federal Government’s $250 million regional backbone blackspot scheme and Metronode building two facilities for NSW's $182 million data centre consolidation project.

Leighton's Infoplex business provides private cloud and managed hosting services.

The three businesses will be combined in the acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close in mid-2013.

The new entity will continue to be led by Leighton Telecommunications group managing director Peter McGrath, with “existing management remaining largely in place”, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan said.

“We will remain an Australian headquartered and managed business and, as we work towards separating from Leighton over the coming months,” McGrath said.

“The management team and I will be using this opportunity to ensure the business continues to be flexible, nimble and focused towards our customers.”