Good evening,

Priced out of the bidding action at the $15 billion AirTrunk or the $2 billion Global Switch Australia? Street Talk has got its mitts on the latest data centre deal in town – iseek, owned by UK-headquartered Amber Infrastructure.

Amber has instructed its bankers at Grant Samuel to fire up an auction for the data centre platform, which sees a pathway to tripling capacity from 16.7 megawatts to 60 megawatts. Flyers hit inboxes this week, and the sale process is expected to get under way this month.

Prospective buyers have been told up to 100 per cent is up for grabs, and both Amber and iseek founder Jason Gomersall will entertain offers for the entirety of their stakes. Preparations for the exit were first revealed by this column in March.

The owners of iseek are understood to be seeking a sale price of about $400 million. While the flyer did not offer up EBITDA numbers, sources told this column it was making about $15 million in earnings, which suggests Grant Samuel’s bankers, led by Melbourne managing director Salih Harman will be pushing for an AirTrunk-esque sale multiple.

Its stomping ground is Queensland and South Australia, where it has about 500 clients on the books. The pitch highlighted iseek’s status as a preferred partner for government clients, which might be a sneaky dig at Global Switch Australia, where ASIC and other federal agencies have been running out of the door due to Chinese ownership.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

• Kiwi energy distributor Powerco’s shareholders Dexus and Australian Retirement Trust are in talks to jointly acquire the Queensland government‘s 33 per cent stake, put up for sale via Barrenjoey.
• Mid-market buyout firm Livingbridge has shoulder-charged its global rivals out at Colinton Capital Partners’ auction for Dimeo.
• The owners of Qualitas Health’s Australian arm are auditioning PE partners to bankroll a $250 million management buyout.
• JPMorgan has lost one of its long-serving private bankers.

• Cancer treatments developer Telix Pharmaceuticals is the latest ASX-listed business to seek a Nasdaq listing, after Life360 last week.
• Airline Bonza’s administrators have given up hope of finding a buyer before Friday’s deadline.
• Rear Window’s turn to look at Guzman y Gomez’s heartburn-inducing IPO documents.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.