Keystone Education Group ("Keystone") has announced the acquisition of UniQuest, a UK-based student engagement, conversion, and retention service.

Deal Overview

The Wilson Partners Corporate Finance team was delighted to support Keystone Education Group with financial and tax due diligence and deal support on the acquisition of student conversion and retention service provider, UniQuest.

Commenting on the acquisition, Erik Harrell, CEO of Keystone said: “Combining UniQuest’s operations with Keystone’s recruitment services will enable us to offer extremely robust student recruitment, enrolment, and retention services to our 5,500 customer base, across our key geographic markets, including the US, the UK, and continental Europe.”

“With the acquisition of UniQuest, we will be able to help our customers face their enrolment challenges head-on and gain an edge over their competition with the help of our end-to-end global student recruitment, enrolment, and retention services”.

Rachel Fletcher, CEO of UniQuest added: “Combined with Keystone’s impressive global footprint and student reach, together we will be able to help more universities around the world reach their student recruitment goals, delivering unparalleled student support”.

About the Parties

UniQuest was established in 2013 and specializes in improving student conversion and retention – setting the standard in student engagement. To date, UniQuest has engaged 1.2m students and managed over 25m student communications resulting in 110,000 enrolments on behalf of higher education institutions across the UK and US. Knowing that student success is driven by personal interactions supported by technology, UniQuest brings together the expertise, the right people, and the technology to strategically engage every student from first inquiry to enrolment and on to graduation. UniQuest works in close partnership with universities to achieve this, acting as an extension of their teams to produce outstanding recruitment and retention results together.

Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Keystone is backed by Viking Venture and Verdane, two leading Nordic venture firms. With offices across the Nordics, Germany, and the UK, Keystone has an international staff of more than 450 employees.

In turn, Keystone helps over 5 500 education institutions reach, recruit, and enroll prospective students in more than 190 countries, across 460 student websites, including Masterstudies.com, Bachelorstudies.com, Educations.com, Studentum.se, and FindAMasters. Keystone also operates a range of other global student recruitment services, including Blueberry.nu, Keystone Sports and Keystone Recruit.