The market for educational institutions moves the investor scene.

After the financial investor IK Partners sold the tutoring chain Studienkreis, the competitor Schülerhilfe moved into focus.

The private equity house Oakley Capital has already mandated an investment bank, namely Rothschild, to sound out the market, as the FAZ has learned from several sources.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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Oakley originally considered initiating a sale process earlier this year.

But that was postponed.

One reason is the current difficulties for interested parties to get loans.

A second is the special and formative position of the CEO Dieter Werkhausen, who has a significant minority share and strong say.

"You hear different signals from the market about the case," says a merger consultant.

"Oakley has made advances from time to time, but never really got serious." Werkhausen has very clear ideas about who should acquire the company and, above all, who shouldn't.

He does not act like the typical CEO, but rather as an entrepreneur.

Two experts describe the manager, who used to work as a sales director at the coffee roaster Tchibo and came to help students in 2010, as "strong in opinion".

Werkhausen apparently wants to increase its stake.

"The extreme scenario would be a majority," says an industry expert, although the question is which construction he could use to finance it.

Oakley Capital and Werkhausen declined to comment.

Billion market tuition

The investor calls Schülerhilfe the leading tutoring provider in Germany and Austria with more than 1,000 locations and 125,000 students and estimates the corresponding market in Germany at more than 1 billion euros.

Schülerhilfe – more precisely: ZGS Bildungs ​​GmbH, which stands above it – has been in the hands of private equity since 2009: It first belonged to the financial investors Paragon Partners and Syntegra Capital, before going to DBAG in 2013.

According to insider information at the time, it acquired around three quarters of the shares, the rest remained with the management around Werkhausen.

In 2017, DBAG passed the company on to Oakley Capital – the same year that Studienkreis went from financial investor Aurelius to IK.

Tutoring institutes and training facilities are a sought-after industry for financial investors.

Recently there was a new movement in the industry: IK – formerly Industri Kapital – is now passing on Studienkreis: the buyer is the Viennese tutoring platform GoStudent.

It combines digital and stationary offerings - in line with the industry trend that has been consolidated by the lockdowns of the corona pandemic.

The numbers are very similar to those for student aid: According to its own information, Studienkreis operates around a thousand locations and serves 125,000 students annually.

Another transaction took place shortly before Christmas: Quadriga announced that it would sell the Viennese Aspire Group to the French private equity firm EMZ Partners.

An old acquaintance, the former Silverfleet partner Klaus Maurer, now works there as a senior partner for the German-speaking region.

Aspire offers professional training for public clients in Austria and Germany: from IT training to international educational visits to preparing the unemployed for new jobs.

The group comprises eight companies with 1,200 employees and 100,000 trainees and most recently achieved sales of 100 million euros.