Liberty Global Ventures, the investment arm of Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners, a leading independent private equity firm specialized in infrastructure and technology investments, have set up a new Joint Venture (JV) aimed at assessing the opportunity in building fibre-to-the-home networks in Germany.
The 50:50 JV, which is subject to regulatory approval, sees the two companies leverage their extensive expertise in infrastructure investment and development. The JV will take a modular approach, with the first phase targeting a small number of municipalities in Germany. If specifically defined success criteria are met during the first phase, it will open up further investment opportunities for the joint venture.
Having operated Unitymedia for a decade, Liberty Global brings extensive experience of the German market to the JV. This includes working closely with municipalities and regional authorities in Germany as Unitymedia expanded its network in the country, which reached 13 million homes passed and 7.2 million customers by the time of its sale to Vodafone in 2019.
Robert Dunn, Managing Director, Connectivity Investments, Liberty Global
Liberty Networks Germany offers an exciting opportunity to leverage our expertise in deploying critical broadband infrastructure in a market we know very well. We’re also excited by the attractive returns offered by greenfield fibre network deployment in a country where millions of homes don’t yet have access to fast and reliable broadband.
Bruno Candès, Partner, InfraVia Capital Partners
We are excited to be working with Liberty Global to explore this opportunity in Germany, seizing on the ever-increasing data usage and the acceleration of work from home patterns. We look forward to leveraging the investment capacity of our fifth infrastructure fund and our leading expertise in digital infrastructure investments during this project.
