KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Group Holdings Bhd has close to RM5 billion worth of deals in the pipeline for data centres.
Group chief executive officer Novan Amirudin said a lot of conversations that take place, including those with foreign investors today, revolve around data centres and the right ways to structure the deals.
"In the pipeline, we have close to RM5 billion in total, in terms of the number of deals (on data centres) that we are discussing.
"The ones we have mobilised which include signing, is about half a billion," he told reporters in a media briefing for the group's financial results in the second quarter of 2024.
Novan said Malaysia is used to funding infrastructure projects and therefore the bank is looking at using the existing knowledge to structure deals on data centres.
"Data centres are mainly infrastructure projects and this country is very used to funding infrastructure projects. So we have to look at how we transfer that knowledge to structuring data centre deals.
"We have been using that knowledge and are involved in a lot of discussions," he added.
A recent research report by Macquarie Equity Research noted Malaysia remains as a leading market for data centres in Asean.
It stated Malaysia's growth in terms of demand for data centres is only behind India and it cited industry experts about a 5.6 Gigawatt demand forecast over the next 10 years.