Standard Chartered Bank Principal Finance commits to US$73m investment in Chayora, a China Data Centre Campus Developer and Operator

Standard Chartered Bank to become a lead investor in Chayora in providing equity funding for Data Centers in China. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) March 22, 2016 - Hong Kong - Standard Chartered Bank Principal Finance Real Estate ("SCB PFRE"), a unit of Standard Chartered PLC (LONDON: STAN), and Chayora Holdings Limited have reached agreement for SCB PFRE to become the lead institutional investor in Chayora, securing a strategic minority stake and providing equity funding for key Chayora's data centre development projects.

The agreement involves a direct equity stake of up to 19.5% in Chayora Holdings Limited and the introduction of additional substantial long-term equity for the anchor data centres located within Chayora's planned Tianjin and Hangzhou campuses. This commitment by SCB PFRE triggers matching equity from Chayora's prominent domestic strategic partners for these projects.

The investment partnership between SCB PFRE and Chayora combines required capital, a wealth of global client relationships and China market expertise with a unique data centre campus based platform that will support the needs of both international and premium domestic data centre users who require highly resilient, energy efficient, large scale build-to-suit data centres in China. This partnership will also allow Chayora's international customers to benefit from Standard Chartered's wide range of cross border, global-to-China banking and financing solutions for their data centre investment and operations.

"We are now at a key inflection point in the critical transformation of China's economy from investment and manufacturing to consumption and services. Underpinning this transition is the tremendous growth in the provisioning of services, including e-commerce, cloud, ICT, banking and financial services, via the internet. World-class data centre infrastructure with long-term scalability that are designed, built and operated to best-in-class global standards is an essential enabler in this transition. We believe that Chayora's core competence of design capability, power, land and permitting solutions and its world-class, highly experienced management team will make it one of the leading data centre solution providers in China." comments Brian Chinappi, Managing Director and Global Head of Principal Finance Real Estate of Standard Chartered Bank.

"Standard Chartered is a highly respected global-to-China financial institution with proven China market experience, relationships and staying power. Standard Chartered's equity commitment means that Chayora's other pre-committed capital injections are triggered and Chayora will now move forward aggressively with an initial development capital capacity of up to US$300m. Standard Chartered Bank Principal Finance Real Estate's involvement adds both funding and expertise and will materially boost our ability to deliver for our target customers: global Fortune 500 customers and China Inc. champions who are committed to the next wave of Cloud and ICT innovation in China" says Oliver Jones, CEO, Chayora.

Chayora's core offer is to develop and operate large-scale, built-to-suit, high-performance data centres for individual clients on 5 to 15 year contracts, on multiple strategically located campuses with 'ready to operate' robust scalable infrastructure capable of supporting the operation of data centres to world-class standards. Subject to customer requirements, Chayora can offer this on a flexible powered land basis through to a full turnkey and operate solution with a unique modular approach to growth in required capacity as it is needed. As part of the overall solution Chayora offers highly competitive power supply arrangements and green power solutions, project financing solutions and fully transparent contracts with best-in-class global performance commitments in China.

"To date, global cloud, banking and IT services providers have faced a serious shortage of large, scalable, leading-edge data centre infrastructure in China. With the announcement of our agreement with Standard Chartered Bank Principal Finance Real Estate and with the support of our trusted domestic partners, Chayora is now superbly positioned to offer our customers leading-edge design and operational capabilities, clear and transparent licensing and regulatory comfort, large and long-term scalable, reliable facilities, superior economics and high supply confidence for power and fibre solutions. Chayora has assembled the full solutions pack to deliver a word-class product to our customers in China." says Jonathan Berney COO, Chayora.

About Standard Chartered Bank Principal Finance: Standard Chartered's principal finance business provides private equity solutions to the Bank's clients across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Our private equity platform invests in companies in need of expansion capital or acquisition finance, and in management buy-outs, focusing on companies whose principal operations and management are located in our footprint markets. At the same time, our real estate platform invests in assets and projects in partnership with the Bank's clients, providing strategic capital for our partners and clients to expand their real estate business across the Bank's Asian markets. We are an active partner that provides board-level strategic advice and access to the international network of Standard Chartered Bank. Since inception, our principal finance business has invested in excess of US$6 billion in over 100 companies, projects and assets across the Bank's footprint.

About Chayora:
Chayora Holdings Limited is a Cayman Island company and is the 100% owner of Chayora Limited, headquartered in Hong Kong which develops large-scale, world-class designed and operated, long-term scalable data centres and data centre parks in China. Chayora serves global Fortune 500 companies and premium Chinese data centre users offering cloud services, ICT services, financial services or other services offerings relying on intensive, high quality data centre infrastructure in China.

Contact: For media relations enquiries, please contact either:
Oliver Jones (oliver.jones ( @ ) chayora dot com / +852 9227 3850 / +44 7802 985053) or

Jonathan Berney (jonathan.berney ( @ ) chayora dot com / +852 9223 1446 / +852 2297 2202) or

Valerie Tay (valerie.tay ( @ ) sc dot com / +65 65969284)

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