August 3, 2016 — Safanad is pleased to announce that an affiliate has made an investment in CentralColo Holdings LLC.
CentralColo is an operator of data centers offering both retail and wholesale services to a global client base. CentralColo’s first facility is in the heart of Silicon Valley providing colocation services to a broad array of customers. CentralColo is positioned to address the needs of both mission critical IT loads and also high density compute requirements such as research and development, testing, warehousing and staging platforms.
Safanad is partnering in this investment with San Francisco based investment firm, Industry Capital, and data center executive Ken Parent. Ken assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer. Ken is the former CEO and a founder of ByteGrid, a national platform of Tier 3 / 4 data centers in the U.S. Prior to founding ByteGrid, Ken held the positions of CFO and COO of The Mills Corporation, a publicly traded real estate investment trust that was acquired by Simon Property Group in 2007.
Craig Kahler, Director of Private Equity at Safanad, commented, “CentralColo is well capitalized to support the growth of its current operations in Silicon Valley as well as new locations to meet the needs of its growing client base. We are thrilled to work with Ken Parent and the rest of the management team. This investment leverages Safanad’s expertise in both private equity and real estate.”
Ken Parent, CEO, added, “This is a tremendously exciting opportunity and I look forward to working with the team and our partners at Safanad and Industry Capital as we take CentralColo to the next level. Our partners have funded our growth strategy and support both our organic growth and strategic asset acquisition plans. This is a great opportunity to expand upon our customer centric model that focuses on offering scalable data and compute center solutions.”
Norman Villarina, Managing Partner at Industry Capital, commented, “Our partnership with Safanad comes at a great time for CentralColo as we have laid the foundation over the past year. Our expansion plans are well supported by Ken joining us as CEO as he not only brings significant expertise in managing and acquiring data centers, but also significant skills in leading the growth of organizations.”
Shearman & Sterling LLP and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP provided legal counsel to Safanad. CentralColo was provided legal advice by Perkins Coie LLP. Artis Advisors LLC provided advisory services to Industry Capital.