Global Tower Partners acquired by Private Equity

Global Tower Partners announced their acquisition to a consortium led by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners and Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group. A quick search for Macquarie finds that they created the entities last year to fund investments in infrastructure.

From their website, it appears that Macquarie currently controls:

Broadcast Australia is Australia’s leading independent broadcast transmission provider.
Arqiva has a global broadcast, media and mobile communications capability.
National Grid Wireless was recently acquired by Arqiva.
Airwave is the primary provider of secure communications to Britain’s emergency services.

It appears that Macquarie will keep the current management intact, which we believe is a good thing. GTP, through Mark Ganzi and associates, has experienced excellent growth. GTP controls 4500 or so rooftops for wireless use. Given Ganzi’s background with Apex Site Management (one of the original rooftop management companies that was acquired by Spectrasite), we surmise that he understands the value of rooftops far better than many people in the industry.

We have heard that GTP is actively purchasing rooftop leases. If you compare the purchase multiples paid for rooftop cell site leases vs those paid for towers, it seems like a great strategy assuming that GTP is purchasing the rights to the entire rooftops.