Schafer: After all these years, for-profit education is just getting started
They shared a convincing story of continued growth in their merger and acquisition practice serving education clients, one of four areas of in-depth expertise at the firm. And I had thought going into the conversation that the bloom had not only come off the rose in for-profit education, but the rosebushes died.
My own thinking had been colored by the bad news still dribbling out, like in the spring when an agreement was reached for more than 900 former students of Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business to get their student debt wiped out. It was a similar story last month for former students of ITT Tech.
Most of us never got near such for-profit schools, of course. The local public school is a government operation and the “private school” nearby is almost certainly a nonprofit. That’s true from kindergarten all the way through university graduate programs.
As the Cherry Tree bankers cheerfully described, the booming education market includes all the providers of software, curriculum, student assessment tools, equipment and other things those public and nonprofit schools need. And their need only seems to grow.
Cherry Tree is coming off its best year ever. It’s looking to hire people who are ready to step in right away and run their own deals or projects, in education or another practice area.
Minnetonka-based Cherry Tree works on transactions between $10 million and $200 million in value. Unlike a lot of other firms that almost exclusively represent sellers of companies, Cherry Tree also will happily help clients buy other businesses or technologies.
Cherry Tree has been in education longer than it’s been a merger and acquisition advisory firm. It got its start in 1980 in venture capital. In 1989 Cherry Tree helped create and finance a new company formed out of the education assets of Control Data, later called Plato Learning and, for nearly a decade now, Edmentum.
Former Plato Learning business development manager Chad Johnson, with a couple of stops in between, came to Cherry Tree in 2007 to further develop its practice in education. He primarily works with companies that supply K-12 education.
SOURCE: STAR TRIBUNE
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SOURCE: STAR TRIBUNE
SOURCE: STAR TRIBUNE
Cherry Tree & Associates provides investment banking services through our FINRA-licensed broker dealer.