Cairneagle wins at the EducationInvestor Awards

 
Cairneagle is delighted to have won in the category ‘Consultant of the Year – to Deal-making’ at the 2024 EducationInvestor Awards. This is the sixth time the firm has been recognised at the annual ceremony.

Cairneagle is a strategy consulting firm which helps operators and investors in education be more effective by applying a commercial and evidence-based lens to their issues; it brings structure, insight and judgement to situations of uncertainty and material financial impact. In 2022, it joined forces with VWV (who also won at the ceremony in the legal category) to bolster their combined businesses in the education sector.

Its exclusive focus on education in the UK and internationally gives it deep insight into the industry’s dynamics, opportunities and challenges. It works across the entire education spectrum, including early years, K12/ schools, post-secondary education, SEN, corporate training, B2C and service provision (including edtech, managed services, resources, assessment and publishing). Projects include corporate and business unit strategy, commercial due diligence, portfolio review, M&A screening, proposition development, turnaround strategy, contingency planning, and pricing strategy.

The judges “admired how Cairneagle’s work singularly focusing on the education industry has diversified, covering a wide range of sub-sectors and different markets. They thought that Cairneagle’s measured outcomes for 2023 were very impressive, from number of projects to sector coverage, global reach and thought leadership.”

Over the course of 2023, Cairneagle undertook c. 80 projects across c. 20 countries. Despite a tough market globally, it experienced record activity in the first half of the year and invested in growing its team and infrastructure. Projects included:

• Multiple CDDs for a top-5 international schools group, across several continents
• Evaluation of the opportunity for a global media group to scale up its eCPD division
• Commercial due diligence of several UK apprenticeship businesses
• Detailed strategy review of an underperforming regional business of a school group
• Vendor commercial due diligence of Storal, a leading nursery provider
• Evaluation of the turnaround opportunity for the APAC division of a global education publisher
• Vendor commercial due diligence of a US corporate training business, including a review of the addressable market and a voice of the customer exercise
• Several commercial due diligences for a leading digital K12 CPD provider, to help it enhance and diversify its offering
• CDD to assess a platform investment opportunity in an international school and nursery group
• Support for an education business to continue to expand into North America

Beyond projects, Cairneagle supports two education charities and contributes to the sector through publications, facilitation of working groups, keynote speeches and panel participation.

Arun Kanwar, Cairneagle Managing Partner, commented: “We are honoured to be recognised in this way, and we would like to thank our clients for continuing to trust us with their most mission-critical issues and our team for their unwavering commitment to excellence and supporting the values of our organisation.”

info@cairneagle.com | +44 20 7036 9400 | www.cairneagle.com