International private equity firm Cinven has partnered with founder Jesús Núñez and Mubadala Investment Company to acquire a majority stake in Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio Group (UAX), a private higher education platform in Spain, from CVC Funds.
Núñez and the management team will reinvest in UAX. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
UAX was founded in Madrid in 1993. It offers a range of undergraduate, postgraduate, and technical vocation programmes across disciplines including health sciences, engineering, business, education and arts, which are delivered both online and face to face.
CVC Funds invested in UAX in 2019 alongside the founding family. Over the course of the investment, UAX has established corporate partnerships to support employability and invested more than €350m to enhance and expand facilities, including new campuses in Madrid and Málaga. It has also expanded to offer new technical vocation and lifelong learning postgraduate programmes, has developed a renewed and technology-driven academic proposal for Business & Tech and has signed partnerships agreements with Rafa Nadal and LaLiga in the sports segment.
Total student numbers have increased from 8k to 35k, representing a 23% CAGR.
