The Carlyle Group considers tilt at Affinity Education; bankers up
Get ready for Geoff Hutchinson’s first big swing.
Street Talk understands the newly anointed country head for The Carlyle Group is working with RBC Capital Markets to help prepare an indicative offer for early childhood education business Affinity Education.
Quadrant Private Equity kicked off a strategic review earlier this year, calling in sell-side advisers Barrenjoey and Jefferies to open the data room to a handful of chosen parties in late August.
Affinity Education has more than 200 centres, having increased its network by more than one-third since Quadrant Private Equity bought in. Louie Douvis
First-round bids for what’s tipped to be one of the largest childcare deals seen in Australia are due in the first week of October. It’s early days but the group of tyre-kickers around Affinity is understood to be thick with private capital.
If successful, this would be far from Carlyle’s maiden foray into the childcare and early education sector. The private equity giant invested in global provider of PreK-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education Accelerate Learning in 2018, becoming its majority owner.
It also has investments in China’s OneSmart Education and sold British child car-seat maker Britax Childcare to Nordic Capital in 2010.
Affinity Education is Australia’s third-biggest early education provider, with close to 5 per cent of the childcare services market (by revenue). Quadrant acquired Affinity from Anchorage Capital Partners for about $650 million in June 2021.
Potential backers have been told the company has acquired more than 50 early childhood education centres since 2021. It’s also opened several greenfield centres, putting it in charge of more than 200 centres across six states.
Geoff
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