BPP University tight-lipped on rumours it’s no longer for sale

Law school declines to comment on website report, weeks after scooping super-exam prep course contract for six City players

BPP University has declined to comment on rumours that it’s no longer up for sale.

In the summer Legal Cheek reported that Apollo Education Group, the US owners of BPP University, of which BPP Law School is a subsidiary, was understood to be selling the training giant. BPP declined to comment at the time.

But Apollo has now taken BPP “off the market” after just six months, the website The Lawyer reports, after “no potential buyer willing to pay the asking price was found”.

Citing unnamed sources, the report claims Apollo was valuing “BPP at too high a price for private equity investors” but that it continues to pursue “individual offer discussions”. BPP declined to comment on the latest rumours.

BPP Holdings (owner of BPP University) was snapped up by Apollo for £303 million in 2009, while Apollo itself was acquired by a trio of US private equity firms for an eyewatering £760 million in 2017. It also owns the University of Phoenix, Western International University and the College for Financial Planning.

The rumours of the on-off sale come just weeks after a “consortium” of City law firms — made up of Freshfields, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright, Linklaters and Slaughter and May — picked BPP to help prepare its future trainees to sit the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE).