Keep pulling the thread on Barry Sternlicht.
Starwood Capital Group owns a majority interest in Europe's largest data center operator, which is based in Ireland.
Starwood Capital Group, together with Warburg Pincus, acquired a controlling interest in ESR, Asia's largest real estate asset manager, and took it private last year.
The take-private acquisition of ESR was the largest privatization deal in Asia last year.
Starwood Capital Group plans to grow ESR dramatically and then take it public again via an IPO.
Over the last six months, hyperscale cloud providers have become significantly more active in expanding their data center presence in Europe and Asia.
Starwood Capital Group's strategy in Europe involves taking small public REITs private, as many struggle to achieve sufficient scale.
Starwood Capital Group has recently avoided investing in U.S. 'blue states' due to their propensity to tax businesses and individuals.
Barry Sternlicht predicts that in 5 to 10 years, real estate markets in Nashville, Dallas, Atlanta, Raleigh, and Florida will outperform those in 'blue states'.
Starwood Capital Group has been investing in data centers for the last five years.
The Dulles market is the largest data center market in the world with 8.5 gigawatts of power capacity in place.
Starwood Capital Group has executed a deal with Bitcoin miner Myra Holdings.
Starwood Capital Group's Irish data center operator has a joint venture with the Spanish utility company Iberdrola.