Milan, 1 October 2026 – KYIP Capital, an independent asset management company specialising in growth buyout investments, announces the completion of the sale of Plena Education, Italy’s third-largest private higher education group in the creative arts, to Europa Education Group, an international education group backed by EQT Infrastructure and Permira and operating in Spain, Portugal and Andorra. The acquisition of Plena marks Europa Education Group’s entry into the Italian market.

The transaction concludes an investment journey launched in 2022, during which KYIP led Plena’s transformation and growth, taking the Group from an initial perimeter of approximately 2,600 students and €14 million in revenues to approximately 5,300 students, nearly 90 academic programmes and 14 campuses across six Italian cities, with revenues of approximately €32.5 million in the 2025/26 academic year. Over the same period, the share of international students increased from approximately 7% to 19%.

Gianluca Losi, CEO and Founding Partner of KYIP Capital, commented: “Plena represents an important milestone for us and reflects our approach to value creation. It is the result of four years of intensive work alongside the entrepreneurs, management team and people across the Group, who have contributed to transforming Plena into a larger, more structured business, attractive to a leading international education group such as Europa Education. We are particularly proud of this transaction, which represents the fund’s first exit and combines a strong financial outcome with a solid industrial project built over the past four years.”

The investment fully reflects KYIP’s investment thesis: identifying markets supported by structural growth trends that remain fragmented, investing in businesses with solid fundamentals and untapped potential, and working alongside management teams to help them achieve greater scale and competitiveness.

In the Italian higher education market, this thesis translated into building a platform around institutions with established brands, distinctive capabilities and high-quality academic offerings. The Group’s development was guided throughout the investment period by KYIP’s proprietary Core – Digital – Culture framework, with the aim of strengthening the core business, accelerating digital transformation and building a more integrated Group structure.

The buy-and-build strategy brought together six Italian academic institutions and, in 2023, led to the creation of Plena Education. Alongside growth through acquisitions, KYIP strengthened the management team and drove a deep operational and digital integration of the Group, including the centralisation of sales and marketing functions, the development of new student acquisition and engagement channels and a more structured use of data across the entire funnel. In parallel, the Group expanded its academic offering with more than 40 new courses and programmes, secured new institutional accreditations in Italy and internationally, invested in the expansion and refurbishment of its campuses, particularly in Milan and Rome, and expanded its international reach through double-degree programmes and new partnerships with international universities.

Carlo Privitera, Digital & Operation Founding Partner of KYIP Capital, added: “Plena is a clear example of our approach to building platforms: alongside growth through acquisitions, from the outset we focused on integration and digital transformation. We redesigned the student acquisition and enrolment funnel, introduced a Group-wide CRM and shared tools, implemented more structured monitoring of channels and commercial performance, and strengthened the use of data to support decision-making. This made student engagement more effective while progressively integrating the different institutions, generating tangible synergies without compromising their individual identities and positioning. It is this transition from aggregation to integration that has made Plena a stronger and more scalable platform.”

KYIP Capital was advised on the transaction by UBS as M&A advisor and by PedersoliGattai as legal advisor.