Milbank LLP advised J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC in a $12.6 billion private securities offering to raise capital in connection with Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) and BlackRock, Inc.’s (NYSE: BLK) new strategic venture to develop and own a state-of-the-art 1 GW data center campus in El Paso, Texas.
This partnership will further support the long-term AI ambitions of both Meta and BlackRock. Funds managed by BlackRock will own an 80% interest in the venture, while Meta will retain the remaining 20% ownership. The parties have committed to fund their respective pro rata share of the approximately $14 billion in total development costs for the buildings and long-lived power, cooling and connectivity infrastructure at the campus. A portion of BlackRock's investment will be funded with proceeds from the $12.6 billion bond offering.
“Meta and BlackRock’s strategic partnership will help shape the next generation of digital infrastructure, and we are proud to have advised on this landmark transaction,” said Jonathon Jackson, partner and practice group leader of Milbank’s Corporate Finance and Securities Group. “Representing J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley in both their advisory and bookrunning capacities on a transaction of this scale and complexity required seamless collaboration across our finance practices. Transactions like this exemplify the sophisticated, market-defining financings our team is privileged to handle and reflect the depth of our experience advising on the largest and most complex capital markets transactions.”
“This transaction marks another important step in the evolution of the digital infrastructure capital markets,” added Milbank partner Dan Bartfeld, Executive Committee member and co-chair of Milbank’s Digital Infrastructure Practice Group. “As the digital infrastructure space evolves, the quality and rigor of deal structuring is increasingly important to sponsors, issuers and investors alike. That is precisely how our multi-disciplinary team adds value for our clients, where we have led the market's largest and most complex digital infrastructure transactions across a huge range of capital structures."
Read the transaction press release here.
The Milbank team was led by Jonathon Jackson, partner and practice group leader of Milbank’s Corporate Finance and Securities group, and Global Project, Energy and Infrastructure Finance partners and co-chairs of Milbank’s Digital Infrastructure Practice Group Dan Bartfeld and Jaime Ramirez with Corporate Finance and Securities special counsel Teresa Chen and associates Isobel Smith, Allison Mahoney, Jordan Gunning and Rowan Pierson and Global Project, Energy and Infrastructure Finance partner Leah Chacón and associates Sarah Tonkin, Yuman Xu, Dolly Bai, Zach Birenbaum and Johann Sarna.
