ATC Europe snaps up FPS Towers in France
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ATC Europe snaps up FPS Towers in France

ATC Europe, a joint venture between American Tower Corporation and Dutch pension fund manager PGGM, is to acquire FPS Towers, which owns and operates around 2,400 wireless tower sites across France.

The acquisition, which is subject to consultation with FPS Towers’ employee representative body, certain closing conditions and regulatory approval, is expected to close in Q1 2017.

“We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with PGGM by acquiring FPS Towers, which owns an attractive portfolio of French wireless telecommunications real estate assets,” said James D. Taiclet, Jr., American Tower’s chairman, president and chief executive officer.

“Through this transaction, we expect to elevate the growth profile of our European operations by entering into a new market with attractive wireless tower leasing opportunities and solid long-term growth prospects, while generating immediate accretion to our AFFO per share.”

American Tower and PGGM expect to fund the equity portion of the transaction proportionally to their interests in the joint venture and American Tower expects to fund the debt portion.

Erik van de Brake, head of Infrastructure at PGGM, added: “We are very pleased to expand our partnership with American Tower to include FPS Towers, which further enhances PGGM’s ability to invest pension money into the real economy on behalf of its clients. The FPS towers are part of an essential infrastructure for mobile communication and this long-term investment is supporting the European economy and will bring good and stable returns to the participants of the funds whose capital we are managing.’’

American Tower has also struck an agreement to acquire Argentina-based CyCSA, adding 1,000 urban wireless sites and a 2,500km fibre-optic network to its existing portfolio of around 144,000 communications sites.





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