Alpine Investors launches improvement services platform; KKR headlines six recent data center deals

Happy Friday, dealmakers!

It’s Rafael Canton here on the Wire for the first time.

This morning, we have a look at a recent rise in data center-related deals over the past two months involving firms such as KKR and GI Partners.

We also have some deals that caught our eye late yesterday, one involving Renovus Capital Partners and the other featuring Alpine Investors, then a brief look at how relationships can impact dealmaking.

Governance
Premier International, a portfolio company of Renovus Capital Partners, acquired Information Asset, a New Jersey-based data governance and risk management firm.

Chicago-based Premier is a tech consulting firm.

“Adding a trusted and experienced offshore delivery team has been a major goal for Premier, and the acquisition brings complementary, high-value capabilities by providing customers with new offerings across the data lifecycle,” said Manan Shah, a partner at Renovus Capital Partners, said in a statement.

Residential
Alpine Investors launched Vertex Services Partners, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based residential home improvement services platform. As part of the new platform, Vertex acquired four roofing companies. No terms of the deal were disclosed.

“Our goal is to provide our partner businesses the benefits of a large company while giving them the autonomy to operate independently,” said Dan Sanner, founding partner at Alpine Investors in a statement. “Our community of values-led organizations will create the unique opportunity to attract top talent and build growth opportunities across these businesses.”

Cherry Roofing & Siding, McHale Roofing, Rogers Roofing, and Victors Home Solutions will continue to operate independently under their existing brands.

For ongoing coverage of deal announcements reported by Iris Dorbian throughout the day, see PE Hub’s news in brief section.

Data Storage
There have been a significant number of deals centered around data centers, which have seen an increase in usage thanks to the evolution of technology.

I looked at six deals involving data centers that have been announced in the past two months.

Here’s a look at a couple of the deals.

PE firm KKR acquired CoolIT, a provider of scalable liquid cooling solutions for the data center and desktop markets. Two months after that acquisition, Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala joined in, investing in CoolIT.

In June, Apollo Management Group made a structured investment in Yondr Group, a global developer, owner, operator and service provider of data centers, primarily in Europe and the Americas.

“With increasing global demand for hyperscale data center capacity, we believe that nimble, proven build-to-suit players like Yondr are well positioned for sustainable growth,” said Apollo Global Management partners and new Yondr board of directors members Trevor Mills and Patrick Kirby in a joint statement.

Here’s the link to the full listicle.

Relationships are at the heart of dealmaking
Earlier this week, my conversation with RedBird Capital Partners about its significant minority investment in rental Go Rentals was published. I spoke to RedBird’s founder, managing partner and chief investment officer, Gerry Cardinale and partner, Andrew Lauck about the deal.

Left off the cutting room floor was something Gerry said that stuck with me. In my less than three months covering private equity, I’ve seen how important relationships can be to dealmaking.

Cardinale has worked with Main Street Advisors’ CEO Paul Wachter on several deals over the years and they continue to partner on investments.

“We’ve been investing together for over 20 years and collaborated recently on investments like Fenway Sports Group and Spring Hill with LeBron James and Maverick Carter,” Cardinale said. “Paul sees investing through the lens of building businesses, similar to our orientation – we both bring highly sophisticated investing skill sets, but with a business-building mentality.”

On that note, I’ll sign off for today. MK Flynn will be back with the Wire on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

If you want to keep the conversation going or have any thoughts, please email me at rafael.c@pei.group.

Thanks,
Rafael