By Yantoultra Ngui
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp (NTT) has appointed Bank of America and UBS to work on a $1 billion data centre real estate investment trust listing in Singapore, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The listing, which sources said was likely to take place in the second half of 2025, could help spur IPO activity in Singapore, where $152.3 million in IPO proceeds were raised last year, up 37.7% from $110.6 million in 2023, according to LSEG data.
The appointments were first reported by IFR earlier on Friday.
“We are currently evaluating the potential of forming a REIT. However, at this moment, no definitive decisions have been made. Consequently, we do not have any additional comments to provide at this time,” NTT DATA Group said in an official email statement to Reuters on Friday.
UBS declined to comment. Bank of America did not immediately respond to an email request seeking comment on Friday.
Singapore announced in August last year the setting up of a review group to recommend measures to strengthen equities market development in the city-state.
The listing, if materialised, would also be the biggest in Singapore since the $977 million IPO of Digital Core REIT in 2021, LSEG data showed.
It comes at a time when investor appetite for data centres is growing in Asia, driven by the demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing-based services.
NTT is a Japanese telecommunication giant with a market capitalisation of $88.92 billion as of Friday, according to LSEG data.
Its global data centres division is one of the largest in the world, spanning more than 20 countries and regions, including the Americas, Asia Pacific, EMEA and India, according to one of its websites.
(Reporting by Yantoultra Ngui; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
