Thibault Contat Desfontaines

Thibault Contat Desfontaines

Co-Head of Infrastructure Private Equity Europe UBS Asset Management

Thibault is responsible for originating, executing and managing direct investments in infrastructure, as well as fundraising in Europe. He is also a member of the UBS AM Global Investment Committee of Infrastructure Equity. His work is focussed on Enterprise Collocation data centres investment, including greenfield developments. Thibault’s team recently developed Datum datacentres asset as a strategically positioned pure-play colocation platform serving high-resilience verticals with strong momentum and scalable growth potential in the UK. They identified and executed the bolt-on acquisition of Teledata to expand Datum’s footprint in Manchester, and are now expanding with the new MCR2 facility (launched in July 2025). A second Farnborough DC is about to begin development/construction, to be completed in H1-2027. A sustainability-driven culture has been fostered through targeted initiatives, including cooling upgrades, HVO fuel adoption, solar panel installation, flood resilience measures etc. across all Datum’s facilities.

Day 1 | 3rd November

9:20 AM Panel: Choosing the right investment route: How investors and operators can assess risk and return across operating assets, powered land, platform strategies and the wider data centre ecosystem

Investing in data centres does not always mean investing directly in the buildings themselves. This session will outline the main routes to gain exposure to the data centre landscape, from stabilised operating assets and platform strategies to development, powered land, debt structures, and the wider ecosystem of compute, infrastructure and service providers. 

As asset disaggregation gains momentum, explore how investors are viewing facility lease income, grid connections and power generation as distinct asset classes, and how standalone power infrastructure is emerging as a highly bankable investment opportunity.

Explore how different strategies behave across the cycle, what drives risk and return in each approach, and how operators can align platform strategy with the capital partners best suited to each stage of development.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Thibault.

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