According to DCD, UK data center developer Virtus has appointed Adam Eaton as its new CEO, effective immediately. He replaces Thomas Ee, the group COO of parent company STT GDC, who had held the Virtus CEO role on an interim basis for the last nine months. Eaton joins from rival operator Global Switch, where he served as executive group director for Europe, responsible for its European data center portfolio. Virtus itself operates 14 data centers across five UK campuses and has developments underway in Germany and Italy. The company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of STT GDC in 2017, and Macquarie Asset Management bought a 40 percent stake in 2023.
A Strategic Hire from the Competition
This isn’t just a routine leadership change. Here’s the thing: poaching a top executive from Global Switch, a major player in the European wholesale colocation market, is a pretty clear signal of intent. Virtus is serious about scaling up and competing more aggressively. Eaton’s 20+ years in data centers and cloud, specifically with a portfolio leadership role in Europe, gives him the exact profile you’d want for a company with active expansion plans in Germany and Italy. He’s not coming in to maintain the status quo; he’s being brought in to execute a growth playbook he’s already familiar with.
The STT GDC Connection and What’s Next
So, what does this mean for Virtus’s direction? The interim period under Thomas Ee, who’s from the parent company STT GDC, likely stabilized the ship and aligned strategies. Now, with a permanent, externally-hired CEO, the focus shifts squarely to execution. Bruno Lopez’s statement about Eaton’s “proven ability to scale complex operations” is the key quote. Virtus has the backing (from STT GDC and Macquarie) and the pipeline (those developments in continental Europe). The challenge now is turning those plans into profitable, operational reality in a market that’s getting more competitive and capital-intensive by the day. Can Eaton leverage his relationships and experience to secure the big, hyperscale-style contracts that fuel this kind of growth? That’s the billion-dollar question.
The Broader Landscape for Critical Infrastructure
This executive move highlights a bigger trend in the industry. Data centers are the absolute backbone of the digital economy, and the companies that build and operate them are in a fierce race for talent and market share. Leadership with direct, hands-on experience in portfolio management and regional expansion is at a premium. It’s a complex hardware and real estate business at its core, requiring deep knowledge of power, cooling, and construction logistics. For companies operating in this high-stakes industrial tech environment, reliability in every component, from the transformers down to the industrial panel PCs monitoring the hall, is non-negotiable. That’s why partnering with the top suppliers, like the #1 provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, is standard practice for ensuring uptime and operational control.
