Houlihan Lokey Advises Inflexion Private Equity Partners

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce the acquisition of Times Higher Education (THE) by Inflexion Private Equity Partners. The transaction closed on February 28, 2019.

THE is the world leader in university data, rankings, and content, with institutions, academics, students, industry, and governments utilizing the information to gain insight, inform strategic priorities, benchmark, assess, and select higher education institutions. THE has led on higher education analysis for nearly half a century, and has more than 700 clients globally across its data, consultancy and hiring services, including Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK, and Harvard, and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the US. For its 2019 University Rankings (including the World University Rankings), THE's in-house data team analyzed over nine million data points on 3,500 institutions worldwide, more than half of which featured in its rankings. The website attracts over 30 million unique visitors annually. The company employs over 100 people across its five offices in the UK, US, Australia, China, and Singapore.

Inflexion is a mid-market private equity firm, investing in high growth, entrepreneurial businesses with ambitious management teams and working in partnership with them to accelerate growth. Inflexion's flexible approach allows it to back both majority and minority investments, typically investing £10 million to £200 million of equity in each deal.

The existing management team at THE will work alongside Inflexion to address the growing demand from universities for data and branding products to improve the performance and academic achievement, as well as to attract students, academics, and funding. In addition to cross-selling to existing clients, there will be a focus on acquiring new customers and launching add-on products through further enhancing the company's digital offering and continuing the expansion into new international markets.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive advisor to Inflexion. This transaction highlights Houlihan Lokey's expertise in advising on complex transactions and delivering significant value to our clients. It further demonstrates Houlihan Lokey's market leading position within the education and data & analytics sector. Recent UK and European education transactions include the acquisition of Impero Holdings by Investcorp Technology Partners, the management buyout of ICS Learn by Primary, and the sales of Atlas Knowledge to Mintra, Minerva Education to Dukes Education Group and The College of Law to Montagu Equity. This transaction also adds to Houlihan Lokey's extensive data & analytics and software track record including the sales of eVision Industry Software to Wolters Kluwer, Ikon Science to Great Hill Partners, and Palantir Solutions to 3esi-Enersight and the sale of Weather Decision Technologies to DTN.