PE Deals

Charterhouse to buy English teaching platform Kids&Us with eyes on expansion

Kids&Us founders and Corpfin Capital will both reinvest in the company as part of the deal.

-
  • The price was €250 million to €300 million, PE Hub Europe understands
  • Kids&Us provides English language teaching to students in Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Mexico and Japan
  • The company has over 170,000 students and more than 550 learning centres

Charterhouse Capital Partners announced on Wednesday that it has entered into an agreement to buy a majority stake in English language teaching provider Kids&Us. The price was between €250 million and €300 million, PE Hub Europe understands.

Kids&Us founders and Corpfin Capital will reinvest in the company. Kids&Us is headquartered in Barcelona and has over 550 centres located mainly in Spain but also across Italy, Belgium, France, Mexico and Japan. Charterhouse intends to aid the company to expand in Europe and elsewhere.

“We look forward to working closely with the company’s talented team to share our extensive expertise in international expansion and our experience in scaling education businesses,” said Pierre de Sarrau, partner at Charterhouse.

The deal is Charterhouse’s fifth acquisition in the education sector in the last two years. The firm has  bought GES-Eductive Group, a private higher education platform based in Paris, and Novetude Santé, a specialist provider of higher education to healthcare professionals headquartered in Clichy, France. It has also made add-on transactions of ICOM and MFO in Italy and France, respectively.

Charterhouse is a private equity firm that invests in mid-market European companies. It has approximately €6 billion in assets under management and has a target transaction size of €200 million to €1.5 billion. The firm is based in London.

Corpfin Capital, the Spanish private equity firm based in Madrid, has over €1 billion in assets under management and has invested across five funds since its inception in 1990. The firm is currently is in the investment phase of Corpfin Capital Fund V which closed at €280 million. The firm bought Kids&Us in 2017.