Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Mr Woodward says before setting up a Chinese nursery, he got together with Oriental Cambridge Education Group (OCEG). Busy Bees could not operate in China without a local business partner and Mr Woodward confesses: “In my opinion, you need a local management team wherever you go in the world.” On Busy Bees’ global expansion, he says: “Sometime in the future we’ll do an acquisition in the US. We’re also looking to expand in Australia, the rest of South East Asia, Vietnam, Philippines”. I’ve always quite liked a challenge.The reason to be in Asia is because it’s a great opportunity. China will have 220 cities with over one million people. In comparison, Europe will have 35 cities with one million. Busy Bees, the leading UK childcare provider, and largest with 329 nurseries nationwide in the UK has now come to China!
He said he had his eye on the business then and that he had been in talks to buy it since the middle of last year. The nurseries care for more than 6,500 mainly expatriate children aged from two months to six years.
Package details:
Harbin is linked to the Asian International College. Yes, we will look to open more training colleges.Teachers should be what most parents want for their child. Staff should be personable, have empathy, smile, have character and energy.” Randles said: "Pete, my husband, said that we should open our own nursery. We all immediately realised that this was a possibility and within seconds John was doing the figures." Harbingrew in the late 19th century with the influx of Russian engineers constructing the eastern leg of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Itserves as a key political, economic, scientific, cultural, and communications hub in as well as an important industrial base of the nation. Harbin is heralded as the Ice Cityfor its well-known winter tourism and recreations andis notable for its beautiful ice sculpture festivalin the winter. (See much more details about Harbin and life there on the link below) The new Busy Bees International Pre School: If you'd asked me 30 years ago, I'd have said we need 300 nurseries in Britain. We're looking to buy a lot more existing nurseries in the UK. " While children may see and paint Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, their work is less about art, more about imitation, with all children creating identical pictures.
Our Queens are British Hybrids and are extremely balanced, user friendly bees. They are all mated but not clipped or marked. ABC and Milken funded an acquisition spree that allowed Busy Bees to swallow bigger but less efficient nursery chains to expand across the country. Nursery chains in the group now include Just Learning, bought last year, Brighton and Hove-based Early Years Childcare, and Leapfrog. We want them to reflect the local community and to be responsive and respond at a local level. They favour Montessori more in China. Harbin has, as a result, some Montessori influences.” This year, Busy Bees wants to open five more pre-schools in China. It intends to have 33 nurseries by 2023, with 200-place nurseries in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Xiamen.Products may be sent out from multiple locations and therefore may arrive separately, but you won't incur additional delivery charges as a result. Mike’s behind it [the deal],” Woodward said. “You probably know Mike’s recent history, but I’m a big Mike Milken fan.” Speaking in Shanghai, during her trade mission in February, Theresa May said: “Now when people think of international trade, I’m sure early years childcare isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. But Busy Bees’ presence here shows just how diverse the British export offer is, just how much we have to offer in China.” He used the attitude gained from opening the group’s first UK nursery in 1984. “We were a bunch of teachers and friends – six of us. We sold our houses to fund it. When we started 35 years ago, a lot of my colleagues said: ‘You’re crazy. You’re giving up a great job. You’re taking on such a risk.’ I quite like proving people wrong. Milken served 22 months in prison for securities violations in the early 1990s but has since revived his reputation, funding cancer research and education projects.
Activities like messy play take place in Harbin with gloop (a cornflour and water mixture) explained to parents and staff as a tool to improve children’s fine motor skills. Making the mixture from scratch is also an opportunity to introduce mathematics. But Ms Smillie says just parents in the UK, parents in China ask similar questions. “One parent asked ‘Do the children like him? Does he have friends?’” Milken, who headed Drexel Burnham’s high-yield bond department in the 1980s, was not directly involved in the talks, he said. Now the group has 213 nurseries, 7,000 employees and looks after 20,000 children aged from three months up to five years.
Explore Nurseries Near you
Better outcomes for young children is at the heart of all we do, whether those children are in my home town in the UK or overseas, we’re completely committed to our mission. There were three potential bidders for the business. Milken gave Teachers' preferred bidder status in September but Woodward said he and Randles had a say too. Busy Bees’ International Pre-school has a library, science room, art room, bilingual library, outdoor garden and an indoor garden. Reflecting local conditions includes an indoor garden - as Harbin is known as the 'ice city'with a snow season that can last as long as half a year with the temperature dropping in January to as low as -38 C.
Mr Woodward wants to blend best practice from Britain with traditional care in China. “There is not just one way of providing education. My view is we should embrace different ways as long as it’s good quality. We don’t want every nursery to be the same.But having nurseries in other parts of Asia helped prepare the group to expand in China. In 2015, Busy Bees bought 70 nurseries in Singapore and Malaysia. It also owns Singapore’s Asian International College. Mr Woodward says: “When we bought the UK, Malaysian and Singapore business we gained essential knowledge. We wouldn’t have gone to China without that”. Glass Jars are sent at the consignees own risk. We regret neither ourselves or the carrier will take responsibility for breakages. We opened our first nursery in 1984, due to our demand for quality care and education for our children. Since then we’ve developed a national network of 344 local nurseries in the UK. In 2015 we saw an opportunity to expand internationally and we now have 73 nurseries in South East Asia. Due to its success we’ve been looking to expand in key markets across the globe. That deal also saw Michael Milken, the US junk bond king who served nearly two years in prison for securities violations, become Busy Bees' majority owner through his Knowledge Universe firm.
Great Deal 
New Comment