Brown Rudnick advises on the sale of Arbor Education Partners
Brown Rudnick (@BrownRudnickLLP) advises on the sale of Arbor Education Partners (@ArborEdu) to The Key Support Services Limited (@TheKeySL)
London, 14th December 2020: Brown Rudnick has advised Arbor Education Partners Group Limited on its sale to The Key Support Services Limited (The Key), part of the Darwin Acquisitions Limited group. The transaction was part of a broader, more complex transaction with CBPE taking a large share in Darwin Acquisition’s holding company. Brown Rudnick acted for the founders, Social Venture Fund II GmbH & Co KG (SVF) managed by Ananda, Nesta Partners Limited (Nesta) and other shareholders of Arbor Education.
Abor Education helps schools work more collaboratively and efficiently with its two data-led products, Arbor MIS and Arbor Insight. Arbor MIS is the fastest growing Management Information System (MIS) used by over 1,200 schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) for easier and enhanced working and Arbor Insight is the industry-leading benchmarking tool used to understand school performance and improve student outcomes. The Key provides sector intelligence and resources to empower education leaders with the knowledge to act.
The Brown Rudnick deal team included Neil Foster, Sarah Melaney, Tracy Fisher, Max Binney, Nick Davies, Toby Plowman and Lois Child.
This is the third EdTech deal of 2020 that Brown Rudnick has advised on and a successful exit for two of the firm’s fund clients, SVF, one of Europe’s largest social impact venture funds and Nesta. In April, Brown Rudnick advised lead investors, Nesta and Oxford Sciences Innovation PLC, on the £7m Series A Funding round in online textbook resource, BibliU. In July, the firm acted again for Nesta and SVF on a c.£1.4m investment round into Third Space Learning, a personalised online maths tuition platform.
Sarah Melaney, Partner at Brown Rudnick said:
“We are proud to have advised Arbor on this landmark deal. We have worked closely with funds Nesta and SVF for a while now and it is great to see Arbor Education reach such a milestone. London’s EdTech ecosystem is still the largest in Europe valued at $3.4bn and Brown Rudnick continues to lead in advising EdTech companies as the pandemic continues to fuel a surge of interest.”
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