Features

Special Report: Buying and selling – gauging the market in 2023

Why does the early years remain a healthy sector in terms of business deals? Meredith Jones Russell speaks to market experts about the hive of M&A activity
LEYF is one of the groups continuing to expand
LEYF is one of the groups continuing to expand

Despite high interest rates and the challenge of securing debt, a negative economic outlook and rising inflation, the nursery market has bucked the trend this year, as mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have continued in the face of declining activity in other sectors.

‘M&A in the nursery sector has held up incredibly well,’ says Arun Kanwar, partner at Cairneagle. ‘There's this sense of nurseries being social infrastructure and having strong, long-term tailwinds and protectivity.’

Ben Barbanel, head of debt finance at OakNorth Bank, agrees. ‘This has clearly become a very interesting roll-out industry for private equity, which used to deploy a lot of money into more disposable income industries like restaurants.

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