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Busy Bees win Leapfrog - it's easy as ABC [AU]

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Author: 
Carson, Vanda
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Article
Publication Date: 
14 Aug 2007
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The child-care provider ABC Learning has consolidated its foothold in Britain, spending £31.2 million ($74 million) on a chain of 88 centres.

ABC plans to merge Leapfrog Nurseries with its British-based chain of nurseries, trading as Busy Bees.

It bought Busy Bees l for $177 million from Gresham Private Equity last December.

Busy Bees operates 33 owned and 15 managed centres and manages a child-care voucher system said to be unique to Britain but which ABC Learning believes it can extend to other countries.

The British business is dwarfed by ABC Learning's ambitions in the US, where it has targeted a market worth $60 billion a year. It has 1,150 centres in 39 American states and plans to open hundreds more.

ABC Learning operates more than 2,300 child-care centres in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Britain.

- reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald