Amandine Wang joins Flow from Digital Realty
Hong Kong-based PAG continues to ramp up its incursion into Asia’s data centre race with the private equity firm on Friday announcing the appointment of Amandine Wang as chief executive officer of its Flow Digital Infrastructure venture.
Wang’s appointment came after PAG Real Estate in November had rolled out a formal corporate identity for the startup along with the expansion of a management team led by industry veteran Kris Kumar.
“Asia Pacific is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies,” said Wang. “Despite this, the digital infrastructure space in the region remains fragmented and heterogenous, presenting challenges for customers seeking consistently high-quality digital infrastructure. This presents us with significant opportunities to meet the ever-growing demands for robust and efficient digital infrastructure.”
The addition to Flow’s management team sets the PAG unit up for competition against global players such as Stack Infrastructure, which in October of last year announced plans to expand its digital infrastructure operations into Asia Pacific, beginning with Japan.
Digital Infrastructure Vet
Stepping into her new role from the beginning of this month, Wang is now overseeing Flow’s commercial, investment and operations functions, focusing on driving company growth and enabling digital economies across Asia Pacific.
Kris Kumar is building up his team
With over 20 years in the digital infrastructure and real estate private equity sector, Wang joins the data centre startup from US-based Digital Realty, where Flow chairman Kumar had served as senior vice president and regional head of Asia Pacific from 2010 to 2014.
“I am delighted to welcome Amandine as Flow’s CEO,” Kumar said. “I have every confidence Amandine will lead the successful implementation of Flow’s growth strategy as we move full speed ahead to build out our platform and meet customer demands.”
The Singapore-based CEO most recently served as head of acquisitions and investments for Asia Pacific at Digital Realty and was responsible for leading acquisitions and investments in the region. From 2017 to 2019 Wang had served as Digital Realty’s vice president for acquisitions and investments in Asia, after starting out at the firm as senior director of acquisitions and investments for Asia in 2013.
While taking on senior roles at the world’s biggest data centre trust, Wang served in Tokyo with Digital Realty’s Japan joint venture with MItsubishi, MC Digitial Realty, as a board member and co-chief strategy officer from April 2020 before relocating back to Singapore just last year.
Competition for Talent
Flow, which focuses on investing in and operating key physical assets of the region-wide digital infrastructure ecosystem, has since November brought together a team of data centre experts with over 10 decades of combined experience.
The new team was first announced just three months after Kumar put aside his retirement plans to serve as chairman for the data centre startup, teaming up with PAG to find fresh talent.
The search for senior data centre leadership continues, with the EQT-backed platform EdgeConneX announcing this month that it had brought on board former Lendlease executive Sam Lee as managing director for market and commercial development in Asia Pacific.
Last month, Flow recruited former Facebook data centre facility technical manager Trevor Parsons as head of design solutions.
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