Palamon generates 3.9x return on sale of leading Italian education platform, 24 ORE Business School
Palamon Capital Partners (“Palamon”), a Pan-European private equity firm based in London, is pleased to announce that it has completed the sale of 24 ORE Business School (the “Company”) to Digit’Ed, the Italian managerial training hub owned by Nextalia Private Equity Fund. The sale generates a 3.9x return on invested capital or €136 million of proceeds for the Palamon funds. It represents the fifth exit event from Palamon’s Third Fund and brings the realised track record of that fund to 3.1x gross MoC.
In 2019, Palamon completed the carve out of 24 ORE Business School from 24 ORE Group, the owner of Italy’s most respected business newspaper Il Sole 24 ORE. Recognising the potential for exponential growth through digitalisation, Palamon invested in the management team and infrastructure to deliver classes online to expand the addressable market nationwide and ramp up digital marketing capabilities. In addition to accelerating its B2C business the company created a highly successful B2B offering by leveraging its extensive library of content to build learning programmes tailored to the needs of industry partners.
Today 24 ORE Business School is one of the leading brands in Italy’s tertiary education market. It is renowned for the effectiveness of its training courses, its extensive links with industry partners, the quality of its professional teachers and the high success rate of its student outcomes. The Company now enrols more than 15,000 students per year onto its highly targeted vocational education programmes. 95% of students who complete full-time courses successfully secure employment. 24 ORE Business School has a best-in-class digital-first management team that accelerated the pivot to e-learning during the early stages of the COVID pandemic and more than doubled the sales of the business within 12 months to €39 million. Today more than 85% of courses are delivered purely online, with 15% being taken as a hybrid of online and classroom based at its two campuses in Milan and Rome.
Manuel Mandelli, CEO of 24 ORE Business School said: “I would like to thank Palamon for their unwavering support and strategic guidance as we completed the work to transform 24 ORE Business School into a market leader in digital learning across B2C and B2B channels. We are excited to become part of the Digit'Ed group and form an essential component in the group’s ambition to cover all the training needs of adulthood, from secondary school to top management, offering high quality content aimed at the evolution of skills to achieve the various professional and business objectives.”
Fabio Massimo Giuseppetti, Partner at Palamon commented, “In 24 ORE Business School we identified a unique asset with a top-tier brand and executed a complex but successful carve-out from Il Sole 24 ORE newspaper group. Leveraging on Palamon’s model transformation expertise, we built new infrastructure and refocused the business strategy, building off its market-leading education offering and extensive industrial network. Importantly, we recruited an extraordinary management team to lead the digital transformation and innovate a go-to-market strategy which has made 24 ORE Business School truly a leader in the tertiary education market in Italy. My thanks go to Manuel and the entire team for helping us build a great business and achieve this incredible investment result.”
The sale of 24 ORE Business School is the fifth exit event from Palamon’s Third Fund and brings the realised track record to 3.1x gross MoC to date. Other exits include Italian leather accessories brand Il Bisonte to Look, Inc., the sale of Veonet to PAI and two large-scale dividend recapitalisations for foreign exchange provider Currencies Direct. Palamon’s investment strategy identifies primary investment opportunities in scaleable businesses that can take advantage of long-term growth dynamics.