CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) has finalized the sale of its colocation business and 54 data centers to a consortium led by private equity firms Medina Capital and BC Partners.CenturyLink said Tuesday it has secured net pre-tax proceeds valued at approximately $1.86 billion and assumed ownership of 10 percent minority stake in the newly created global security infrastructure firm – Cyxtera Technologies – formed by the consortium that includes Longview Asset Management.
The completion of the sale came five months after Medina Capital and BC Partners agreed to purchase Addison, Texas-based machine learning and analytics firm Brainspace, CenturyLink’s data centers and Medina Capital’s portfolio of security and data analytics firms in a $2.8 billion transaction in order to establish a cybersecurity joint venture.
Cyxtera will integrate CenturyLink’s data center portfolio and approximately 700 employees with its workforce under the agreement.
“This sale allows CenturyLink to drive greater focus on our network infrastructure while still having the ability to sell colocation services in these data centers,” said Glen Post, president and CEO of CenturyLink.
CenturyLink will continue to provide cloud and hosting services and finance its purchase of Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT) through net proceeds from the sale of its data centers.
