Vauban Double Winner in Infrastructure Awards

Vauban Infrastructure Partners has been given two accolades at the prestigious Infrastructure Investor Awards 2020.

Vauban, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, triumphed in the Digital Infrastructure Deal of the Year category and was also named Digital Infrastructure Investor of the Year.

Vauban won the award of the “deal of the year” for creating Vauban Infra Fibre, the France’s largest independent national infrastructure platform that aims at accelerating digitalization across the country and in Europe.

Vauban Infra Fibre was publicly launched in June 2020, in partnership with Vauban’s partner, Axione, the wholesale operator. The aim of the platform is to reinforce the robustness and resiliency of Vauban’s existing digital assets by pooling them into a single platform. In addition, this allows Vauban to gather additional financial capacity and commercial strength providing them with significant fire power to further address major developments to support digitalization across Europe.

The platform represents over €6bn of planned capital expenditure, enabling over 11m fibre to the home (FTTH) connections to support bridging the digital divide in Europe over the next two years.

The launch of the Vauban Infra Fibre platform may on its own have been enough for Vauban to win the title of Digital infrastructure Investor of the Year, the award judges noted. But Vauban ensured its victory by teaming up with Bouygues Telecom to bring fibre-based networks to medium-density population areas of France. The joint venture will invest over €1bn of debt and equity in the project over the next four years.