Palamon Capital Partners is to acquire Business School24, the education and training unit of Il Sole 24 ORE, Italy’s leading business newspaper.
Palamon will acquire 49 per cent of the Company at an enterprise valuation of EUR80 million with a call option to acquire an additional 2 per cent in May 2018. The sale agreement has arrangements in place for Palamon to acquire additional equity with Il Sole agreeing to retain a minimum 20 per cent strategic stake in the Company going forward.
Business School24 is a leading player in the tertiary education segment in Italy and provides professionally-oriented education and training. Established in 1991 as a business unit of Il Sole 24 ORE, the school has two headquarters in Milan and Rome and enrols more than 26,000 students a year onto its courses both in classrooms and online. The Company differentiates itself by creating targeted courses focused on the real needs of business and employs highly experienced industry professionals to originate original content and deliver lessons. Most courses incorporate an internship for the students, which presents a highly successful pathway to employment.
Palamon’s investment stems from its ongoing thematic work in the education sector to identify businesses that benefit from a structural shift towards private education. Palamon previously invested in Cambridge Education Group, a pathway provider for foreign students to access western universities, which the Firm exited in 2013 for 14.5x return. Palamon believes that Business School24 is ideally positioned to address the significant need for specialised vocational training among the Italian youth where unemployment currently stands at more than 30 per cent.
Fabio Massimo Giuseppetti, partner of Palamon Capital Partners, says: “Business School24 is one of the most widely respected education brands in Italy and it is playing a key role in overcoming the structural disconnection between tertiary education and graduate employment. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with Il Sole 24 ORE to help accelerate growth in the provision of specialised vocational training and a pathway to the labour market for young Italians. We look forward to working with the talented management team and building out the platform over the years to come.”
Franco Moscetti, CEO of Il Sole 24 ORE, adds: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Palamon to accelerate the expansion of our education services across offline and online channels. Their track record in the education sector and understanding of the industry dynamics convinced us of their ability to successfully capture the market opportunity in Italy.”
