VIRTUS Secures £2.45 Billion Financing Package for UK and European Expansion

VIRTUS Data Centres announced on 24 September 2026 that it has secured a £2.45 billion (about $3.24 billion) financing package from a consortium of 13 banks led by BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered Bank, to fund its build-out across the UK and continental Europe — one of the largest data center bank financings completed in the UK to date.

What is known

According to VIRTUS’s announcement, carried in near-identical detail by Intelligent Data Centres, Data Centre Review, Techerati and Property Week, the package includes a £1.2 billion green capex facility structured in term and revolving tranches, giving the operator flexibility to draw funding against specific projects rather than taking the full amount up front. VIRTUS is part of the STT GDC platform, majority-owned by ST Telemedia with Macquarie Asset Management holding a minority stake since an earlier transaction.

The capital is earmarked for the 78MW AI-ready Saunderton campus in Buckinghamshire, further investment at the LONDON19 facility in Slough, and expansion across STT GDC’s wider European footprint, which trade press reporting ties to sites in Germany (Brandenburg) and Italy (near Milan) — though VIRTUS’s own statement, as quoted by outlets, describes this in general terms rather than confirming those specific projects itself. CEO Adam Eaton is quoted across the coverage: “This financing marks an important milestone for VIRTUS. It reflects the strength and stability of our existing portfolio, our track record of delivery and the opportunities ahead.” Simmons & Simmons advised VIRTUS; Clifford Chance advised the bank consortium.

What it means for a capacity buyer

VIRTUS is the UK’s largest pure-play colocation operator and already accounts for a meaningful share of the country’s disclosed footprint: Coloprice’s catalog currently lists 114 data centers in the UK, with 1,436 MW of disclosed IT capacity across the facilities that publish a figure, concentrated in London (54 sites) and Slough (17). Only 13 of those facilities are flagged AI-ready and 12 are still under construction or announced — so a financing package sized to fund a new 78MW campus outright is a material addition to the pipeline in a market where certified, energised capacity is scarce.

The financing also underscores a pattern the colocation UK market page reflects in Coloprice’s own commentary: UK commercial electricity runs around $0.442/kWh, more than four times Northern Virginia’s $0.103/kWh and well above Germany’s $0.283/kWh, so the energy line rather than the real estate line drives total cost for a British deployment. CBRE’s benchmark for London, tracked on the colocation price index, still only publishes a regional European wholesale range of $165-265/kW/month rather than a city-specific average — CBRE expects a London-specific figure in Q4 2026. Buyers evaluating London capacity against Amsterdam or Dublin should weight that power-cost gap alongside whatever rate VIRTUS or its peers quote for space in the new campuses this financing unlocks.

For operators and investors tracking how data center debt gets structured more broadly, this deal sits alongside the trend Coloprice covered in how AI data centers get financed: a shift toward large, green-labeled bank facilities for stabilized colocation platforms, distinct from the asset-backed securitizations more common in single-tenant hyperscale and neocloud deals. Track the wider construction and investment pipeline at real estate & development and data center investment.

What we don’t know

None of the coverage discloses how the £1.2 billion green capex facility splits across the named projects, nor a construction timeline or energization date for Saunderton beyond it being “AI-ready.” The specific MW figures for the German and Italian sites mentioned by trade press are not confirmed in VIRTUS’s own quoted statement, and no interest rate or covenant terms for the facility have been disclosed.