Digital Colony Management, the private equity arm of Colony Capital Inc., agreed to a complicated two-step transaction process to buy an El Segundo-based real estate development company.
The value of the overall transaction was not disclosed, but the deal includes a $972 million payout to Landmark Infrastructure Partners, a publicly traded arm of privately held Landmark Dividend.
Privately held Digital Colony has $30 billion in assets under management and operates in four key segments, including data centers, macro cell towers, fiber networks and small cell networks.
Colony Capital manages a $46 billion portfolio of real assets on behalf of its shareholders and limited partners, including the digital real estate investments through Digital Colony.
In the first step of the transaction, Digital Colony agreed to buy El Segundo-based Landmark Dividend, a real estate and infrastructure acquisition and development company focusing on digital infrastructure, wireless communications, outdoor advertising and renewable power generation industries.
Because it is a private transaction, details were not disclosed, a Colony Capital spokeswoman said. The acquisition of Landmark Dividend is expected to close in “several weeks,” according to a statement from the company.
The second part of the transaction features the nearly $1 billion payout to Landmark Infrastructure Partners.
Landmark Dividend manages more than 5,000 assets originated on behalf of Landmark, its active private investment vehicles and Landmark Infrastructure Partners.
Landmark Dividend owns, among other things, 100% of the membership interests in the general partner overseeing Landmark Infrastructure Partners and 13.2% of the common units representing limited partner interests in the publicly traded company.
“We are confident this acquisition by Digital Colony will position us to accelerate our pursuit of strategic consolidation in our fragmented industry and drive growth over the long-term,” Landmark Dividend Chief Executive Tim Brazy said in a statement.
Tom Barrack, the founder of Colony Capital and one of the biggest names in private equity, recently stepped away from the investment firm he created in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago.
Ganzi has overseen much of the restructuring at Colony Capital.
