15 May 2025 (with drinks reception on 14 May)
Pan Pacific Hotel | Singapore
WHO WILL LEAD THE NEXT WAVE OF DEALS IN DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE?
Included in your ticket is entry to TMT M&A Awards APAC25
15 May 2025 (with drinks reception on 14 May)
Pan Pacific Hotel | Singapore
Included in your ticket is entry to TMT M&A Awards APAC25
Speaker
Yedda Wang, Asia Editor, TMT Finance
Moderator
Ben Happel, Partner, Altman Solon
Speakers
Harsh Agrawal, Senior Partner, I Squared Capital
Vivek Sood, Group CEO & Managing Director, Axiata Group
Stephen Miller, President & Group CEO, ST Telemedia
Digital infrastructure leaders delve into the evolving landscape of M&A across APAC’s digital infrastructure and telecom sectors, exploring emerging technologies, trends, and financing frameworks and actively identifying opportunities across MNOs, data centers, fiber, towers and more. This panel will also highlight the forces driving the industry's future, such as how AI is transforming business models and reshaping investment strategies.
Moderator
Niranjan Arasaratnam, Partner, Linklaters
Speakers
Udhay Mathialagan, Managing Director, Infrastructure and CEO of Global Data Centres, Brookfield Asset Management
Andrew Thomas, Senior Managing Director, Stonepeak
Ani Satchcroft, Co-Head of Infrastructure for Asia-Pacific, Macquarie Asset Management
M&A leaders explore the 2025 M&A and investment outlook across APAC’s digital infrastructure, focusing on major trends shaping deal flow, promising regions, and key subsectors. Discussions will examine the impact of financing conditions, valuation shifts, divestment strategies, and the evolving strategies of PE funds and private credit players in platform structuring and exits.
Speakers
Kanishka Wickrama, CEO, PT Link Net TBK
Steve Weiss, Vice President Director, Protelindo
Sachin Gupta, Managing Director, Strategic Portfolio, Singtel
This panel examines the M&A and investment outlook for fibre in APAC, focusing on evolving competition, the growing trend of telecom operators monetizing non-core infrastructure, and the continuation of carveouts and restructuring. Discussions will explore wholesale fibre market developments, opportunities in Indonesia's fibre rollout, and key considerations for investors, supported by case studies highlighting successful monetization strategies and high-potential markets in the region.
Speakers
Suresh Sidhu, CEO and Founder, EdgePoint
Towers and connectivity leaders discuss how the convergence of towers, fibre, edge data centres, IoT platforms, and other connectivity assets is creating new opportunities for TowerCos to diversify and drive long-term growth. It also examines key market developments in the Philippines, Japan, and Indonesia, the impact of 5G rollouts across APAC—including Malaysia’s second 5G network—and the integration of AI into TowerCo business models to enhance operations and innovation.
Speakers
Brad Kim, Managing Director, BlackRock Global Infrastructure Funds
Andrew Verdasca, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan
This breakout session examines evolving deal structures and financing opportunities in APAC, focusing on routes to exit, the increasing role of private credit, and the impact of debt on large transactions. Discussions will delve into pricing trends across acquisitions, LBOs, and capex financing, alongside the influence of interest rate shifts and global events, such as the US election, on the region's digital infrastructure market in 2025.
Speaker
Ramoncito Yu III, Founder & CEO, LBS Digital Infrastructure
This session focuses on the next phase of growth in network solutions, including small cells, 5G, and DAS, analyzing recent deals in next-generation connectivity infrastructure. It explores the increasing investment in small cells, lessons from emerging business models, advancements in in-building technologies, and the impact of Malaysia's second 5G network on operators and investors in APAC.
This breakout session explores recent deal case studies in Australia and Japan, uncovering key lessons for future transactions and identifying factors driving Australia's surge in data center investments. It examines the advantages of pan-regional DC platforms, Japan's potential as a key digital infrastructure market with untapped capital, and the challenges of land and power bottlenecks shaping its development.
This session examines Johor’s potential for continued growth as a data center hub amid power and water limitations and its strategic role in US-China digital infrastructure development. Discussions will also explore the rise of Tier-II markets like Batam, the regional impact of data center growth on power and land resources, and the adoption of technologies such as water recycling and desalination to address resource scarcity challenges.
Speakers
Kunal Bajaj, CEO and Co-Founder, CloudExtel
James G. Velasquez, President and CEO, PT&T
This breakout explores the innovative strategies fueling the rapid expansion of fibre networks across the APAC region, with a specific focus on the key players and funding mechanisms shaping the sector's future. Key topics include Indonesia's fibre investment leadership, greenfield rollout trends, the impact of capital costs, and the rise of fibre carveouts to optimize balance sheets and foster strategic partnerships.
This session delves into the evolving M&A landscape in APAC, uncovering new opportunities for investment and the critical role financial banks play in facilitating deals. Discussions will cover the next wave of international investment, emerging deal structures, navigating bottlenecks in the M&A process, and strategies for overcoming the regulatory and operational challenges that impact dealmaking in the region.
This breakout roundtable explores how TowerCos can leverage the renewed demand for small cells and in-building solutions, focusing on market-specific dynamics in countries like the Philippines and Malaysia. Key topics include innovative financing models driving tower infrastructure growth, the strategic implications of partnerships with telcos and hyperscalers for managing edge computing and 5G infrastructure, and the impact of AI on TowerCo expansion and investment strategies.
Speakers
Carson Wolfer, CSO, EdgePoint
This session examines the regional M&A opportunities in the APAC telecom sector, focusing on telcos modernizing operations and leveraging data to become 'techcos.' Discussions will explore key investors driving telecom investment, the influence of joint ventures between investment firms and telcos on market dynamics, and the growing trend of telcos monetizing non-core infrastructure to unlock capital.
Speakers
Swati Goyal, Chief Investment Officer, DCI Data Centers
This session explores how AI is unlocking new revenue opportunities for data centre operators, while investors increasingly turn their attention to this subsector. It will also cover the synergies created by GPU as a Service, the Infratech layer in the broader ecosystem, the advantages of Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC), the growing role of liquid and chip cooling technologies in managing high-density infrastructure and ESG targets, and how traditional digital infrastructure players are navigating energy bottlenecks in the power industry.
In this market deepdive roundtable session, we explore the emerging digital infrastructure landscape in the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. We will examine how major projects like Google's hyperscale data centre in Vietnam, along with significant investments by AWS, Google, and Microsoft in Thailand, are driving growth in digital infrastructure, global connectivity, and data services, while also assessing the impact of foreign investment on technology development and the M&A outlook for these markets in 2025.
Speakers
Serene Nah, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific, Digital Realty
Prashant Murthy, CFO, AirTrunk
This datacentre leaders panel will explore the most attractive markets for investment across APAC in 2025, highlighting innovations in sustainability-linked financing, debt, and private credit to support large-scale projects. Topics will include the pros and cons of hyperscale versus edge data centre strategies, the growing role of AI-led innovation in the region—focusing on chips technology, cooling, and GPU as a service—and how operators and investors are navigating bottlenecks like land and power limitations, as well as water scarcity, to ensure continued growth.
Financing leaders will analyze the impact of the macroeconomic environment on M&A and dealmaking in APAC, exploring whether valuations are becoming more realistic and what the future holds for the region. We’ll examine financing opportunities such as IPOs, REIT listings, equity fundraising, and debt options that TowerCos and data centre operators are pursuing, while also exploring how access to financing, interest rates, and FX exposure are influencing growth plans.