BPP

BPP is a UK-based provider of professional and vocational higher education, providing training and qualifications in a diverse range of professional verticals including law, accountancy & tax, business & finance, data analytics & technology, actuarial and nursing, both to corporates and directly to consumers. BPP is one of only three private universities in the UK. It has over 15,000 students at any point in time studying across 13 centres in eight locations across England and online around the world. We started monitoring BPP as a result of our interest in traditional sectors that could benefit from the application of digital. We also identified a strong growth opportunity for vocational training providers as a result of an emerging trend in many economies to reskill and upskill the workforce in order to drive labour productivity growth. We were attracted to BPP given its strong position in the corporate training space with an unrivalled reputation, scale and breadth of content. We identified an opportunity to partner with BPP’s strong management team to pursue a number of high-growth avenues that the business is well positioned to take advantage of, including expanding its apprenticeship offering, scaling the business through the application of digital, as well as adding further competencies through accretive M&A. Following a bilateral negotiation we acquired BPP in July 2021.