Colony Buys Digital Bridge for $325M, CEO Tom Barrack to Step Down
By Chava Gourarie July 25, 2019 2:02 pm
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Investment giant Colony Capital acquired Digital Bridge Holdings for $325 million and its CEO Marc Ganzi will replace Colony’s current CEO, Tom Barrack, in 2021, the company announced.
Barrack, who stepped down as Colony’s CEO in 2014 to become executive chairman, resumed that position in late 2018 after the company’s stock sank and the firm lost half its value in a year. He will return to his position as executive chairman once the transition is complete.
The double move of purchasing Digital Bridge and appointing Ganzi as CEO is part of Colony’s strategy of combining both companies to become the leading company at the intersection of real estate and digital infrastructure, according to a company statement.
Digital Bridge and Colony collaborated previously on Digital Colony Partners, a $4 billion fund sponsored by the two companies, which closed in May. The fund is focused on investing in digital infrastructure globally.
Combined with Digital Bridge’s $20 billion in global infrastructure assets under management, Colony will now manage $60 billion in assets.
Ganzi, who is also a managing partner at Digital Colony, has been at the intersection of telecommunications and real estate for close to two decades. He founded Global Tower Partners, an owner and operator of communications, real estate and related companies in 2002, and sold the business in 2013 for $4.8 billion.
“I have known Marc Ganzi for over two decades and have admiringly watched his progression and success as an entrepreneur, visionary and as the leading operator and investor in the digital world,” Barrack said in a prepared statement. “Together we will continue to grow and expand our digital, credit and investment management platforms while realigning and redirecting our hospitality and health care verticals.”
Ganzi said he was thrilled to combine the Digital Bridge and Colony teams, and bring together their operating and financial expertise. “Our combined vision will focus on the reality that ever-larger numbers of people will use ever more devices, and the true explosion of use, driven by interconnected devices, cloud computing, mobility, big data, the internet of things, and especially the 5G roll-out, is still to come,” he said in the statement.
