Educate LBO: Done

I had speculated in For Profit Education – More LBOs Coming that Educate (EEEE) and Apollo (APOL) were next up, at the heels of Laureate’s (LAUR) acquisition by KKR and associates.

I had missed the announcement that Educate’s management has already arranged such a deal to take the owners of Sylvan tutoring services private.

Tutoring services company Educate Inc. has, in fact, agreed to be acquired by an investment group led by two of its executives for $344 million, or $8 per share in cash. Including assumed debt, the total value of the deal, which has been approved by Educate’s board, is about $535 million.

Under the agreement, the manager of the Sylvan Learning Centers will be acquired by a group of investors including Christopher Hoehn-Saric, Educate’s chairman and chief executive, and Peter Cohen, its president and chief operating officer, along with certain other members of management and affiliates of Sterling Capital Partners and Citigroup Private Equity.

Unfortunately, however, the company remains under the same management that has so far missed the boat on Online and International, and I wonder if they would now start waking up to those two opportunities.

And of course, that still leaves Apollo (APOL).