Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #4. You're one of 120+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I just spent two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City, and I'm convinced Vietnam is one of the most underrated countries on earth right now. China had its moment in the 90s. Singapore had its moment before that. Vietnam is having its moment right now!
8% GDP growth in 2025, the fastest in Southeast Asia, and it's already overtaken Malaysia and the Philippines. I came here to understand the real estate and capital markets opportunity firsthand. I'm staying because the opportunity is bigger than I expected.
More on that another time. Let's get into it.
Abu Dhabi's MGX is trying to buy Singapore's DayOne before it goes public. DayOne just closed a $4.5B Series C backed by SoftBank, Hillhouse, Coatue, and the Indonesia Investment Authority, and it's targeting a $20B dual listing on the Nasdaq and the Singapore Exchange. MGX already has the chips and the compute story through Stargate UAE - what it doesn't have is the buildings, land, and power across Asia to run them on. DayOne is exactly that: over a gigawatt of renewable energy secured in Johor, one of only four operators approved for new Singapore capacity, and 1.5GW of committed capacity across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Finland.
Pax Silica and Stargate UAE are two tracks of the same Washington strategy - build sovereign AI infrastructure with trusted partners, and lock down the critical mineral supply chains that feed it. But the partner countries aren't just following instructions. UAE, Indonesia, and Japan are all using that framework to make their own moves. If DayOne lists anywhere near $20B, every comparable data centre, power asset, and fibre network in Asia gets repriced around it.
Watch the breakdown: Sovereign Funds Are Buying Data Centres Before They Hit The Stock Market
Also this week:
Digital Realty bought out Blackstone's stake in a Northern Virginia data centre portfolio for $3.5B - three 96MW hyperscale facilities, 288MW total capacity, already leased to hyperscale tenants on 15-year terms. Valued at roughly $27M per MW. Textbook infrastructure exit: Blackstone built it, stabilised it, and recycled the capital.
Mubadala opened its $25B private credit portfolio to outside investors for the first time in 17 years, with Mubadala Capital now managing it and Mubadala committing a further $4.65B of its own money to grow the platform before anyone else invests. The timing is notable - banks are pulling back from direct lending just as parts of the $1.8T private credit market are absorbing a wave of redemptions.
ByteDance is building a $39B, 200MW data centre campus in Ceará, Brazil - its largest outside China. Almost 90% of Brazil's power is renewable, and subsea cables out of nearby Fortaleza connect straight to North America, Europe, and Africa. Tax incentive legislation is still stuck in Congress and a battery storage auction has been delayed, so it's not without friction.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
A North American institution deploying $2.5B into UK, Irish, and Continental European real estate for the first time - half earmarked for development finance, residential their highest conviction area. Last year their debt team closed 3 deals totalling $200M in the region; this year they're going much bigger. Their reasoning: "Traditional bank lending in Europe is still selective" - that gap is exactly where they're moving.
The CIO of an Omani family office is deploying into US multifamily - 50-200 unit acquisitions, $2M-$10M tickets, multiple deals a year, focused on Central Florida rather than the usual Dubai/KSA/London targets. Their reasoning was simple: population growth, landlord-friendly legislation, and a market they understand well.
I also spoke with someone who recently closed a $700M heavy equipment acquisition. His view: the best deals in that space never reach a broker - someone calls the owner directly. What he looks for: service and parts contracts, fleet utilisation that holds up under audit, OEM relationships that survive new ownership, and clean environmental records (one spill kills a deal). A small dealer sells for 3-5x EBITDA; a platform with contracted service revenue sells for 6-8x - the same pattern I flagged with roofing roll-ups last week, just in a different industry.
The curated shortlist of private credit firms actively funding data centres is nearly done - 35 lenders, who they are, what they need to see, and how to get in front of them. Live in about two weeks.
Two deals I underwrote this week:
A $71M residential build in Brisbane, Australia. 91 units, 3.5km from the CBD, backed by a sponsor whose last project topped out 10 floors in 21 days using modular prefab construction. Land is owned and pilings are in, with a revised DA under review to improve height and unit mix ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. The catch: no pre-sales are disclosed on a $50M construction facility, and two tier-1 lenders have already passed - one on the sponsor's thin balance sheet, one on loan size. My verdict: weak fit for private credit and institutions, medium fit for family offices and UHNW retail.
A $20M cannabis facility in South Africa. The pitch is an export-grade cannabis operation on 20 hectares near Paarl. The independent valuation tells a different story - it prices the land as ordinary farmland at roughly $650K, a 30x gap against the $20M facility size. There's no export licence in the data room, no signed offtake, and no defined exit beyond future cash flow projections that nothing currently backs. This isn't a land-secured lending deal - it's early-stage venture capital dressed in real-estate language. My verdict: weak fit across private credit, family offices, and institutions.
I introduced a sponsor to a $500B fund manager this year. It was the most advanced deal I'd worked on - a €150M+ debt/equity raise, institutional investors interested, an impeccable data room. Then the sponsor went quiet. Not to me - to the institutions. Stopped answering questions, ignored follow-ups, always "back within the hour." Some of Europe's most serious institutions were left waiting. Weeks passed. Interest cooled.
The real cost wasn't the fee I lost. It was the relationships I'd vouched for him with.
The lesson: due diligence your sponsor as hard as you due diligence the deal. The capital was there. The institutions were ready. The sponsor wasn't - and that's on the sponsor, but it's also on whoever brought them to the table.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Note: For the best reading experience, open this on a desktop.
Deal | Asset Type | Geography | Structure | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
EU Workforce Housing | Brownfield | Netherlands | Debt/Equity | 400M |
UK Data Centre | Brownfield | UK | Debt | 65M |
Miami Multifamily | Greenfield | USA | Debt+Equity | 115M |
Biomass | Greenfield | USA | Debt/Equity | 865M |
Landbanking | Landbanking | Hong Kong | Debt/Equity | 40M |
This isn't the full pipeline - just a flavour of what's active. If you're an investor or lender active in any of these asset classes or geographies, reply to this email.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.