GLOBAL: EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Fever pitch Nadim Nsouli, chief executive and founder of global premium school group Inspired Education, contracted Covid-19 as he was closing the biggest deal of his company’s history. He talks to Josh O’Neill about his close encounter with the coronavirus, its impact on the company, and why there is strength in numbers amid the pandemic
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n February, as schools across the world began closing as Italy, Spain, Bahrain, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia down to curb the spread of Covid-19, Nadim Nsouli and South Africa had closed down by order of governments. was on the cusp of closing arguably the most important Dealing with complex questions from investors about investment to date in Inspired Education. The founder and performance forecasts was not new to Nsouli, who spent chief executive of the premium private school operator eight years buying, expanding and selling companies for had lined up GIC, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, to buyout houses The Gores Group and Providence Equity invest ¤350 million into the group in exchange for a 15% Partners, where he was head of Europe and a senior partner, respectively. Doing so from a hospital bed, however, was stake. The deal would give Inspired an enterprise value of a novel, stressful experience. ¤3.05 billion just seven years after it launched – making it one of the world’s most valuable independent school “I was making myself worse with the stress,” says chains, along with Cognita, GEMS Education and Nord Nsouli. Despite being hospitalised for five days, he worked Anglia. Despite growing warning signs that the coronavirus throughout most of them, sometimes spending “16 hours” crisis was to negatively impact private on calls with, and sending emails to, schools’ revenues, GIC signed off on his lawyers orchestrating the GIC deal. the investment in March, according to He strategised with Inspired’s regional sources. Just three weeks later, however, management teams scattered across five The deal would and Nsouli would be fearful more for continents as an oxygen tank hummed give Inspired an his life than his ability to close the beside him, driving life into his lungs. enterprise value transaction. “I understood their concerns about the Nsouli chaired a virtual board meeting business – and my health”, which is now of €3.05 billion on 17 March with his investors, at which “perfectly fine”, he says in July, from his just seven years he had been “in bad shape”. A week hideaway in the Bahamas. after it launched later, he had collapsed to the floor of GIC had good reason to fret about the his London home after feeling feverish health of the ship’s captain: sources claim that Nsouli, despite being a minority and short of breath. It was evident that he had likely contracted Covid-19, which shareholder, controls the majority of led him to self-isolate, though he continued to work. But voting rights. Of six seats on Inspired’s board, he controls three, plus the casting vote, insiders say, though he declines on 30 March, Nsouli was rushed to a London hospital by to comment. According to filings with Companies House, ambulance and rigged up to an oxygen tank to support his hampered breathing. At the time, patients infected two of Inspired’s investor board seats are occupied by with the virus who had to be placed in intensive care had Warburg Pincus and TA Associates, two private equity firms that each pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the an approximately 50% chance of death. Fortunately, he group. The other is now controlled by GIC. According to was not one. “My health deteriorated extremely quickly,” says Nsouli, sources familiar with Inspired’s shareholder structure, the recalling the frantic period in which “the dominoes were firm’s investors possess few veto rights – a condition at falling fast”, in terms of both his health and schools closing which most buyout funds would baulk – although, again, down. (EducationInvestor Global was informed by sources Nsouli will neither confirm nor comment on this. Investors in Inspired are seemingly betting on his strategic nous and of Nsouli’s ordeal and spoke with him about it via Zoom.) By late March, most of the group’s schools in countries such have limited say over big decisions.
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EducationInvestor Global • July/August 2020
