Gresham backs expansion of financial services training provider 7city Learning

Gresham Private Equity, the UK mid market private equity specialist, today announces that it has backed the management buy-out of 7city Group Ltd (7city). Co-founders, Jonathan Shaw, Gil Christie and Paul Shaw led the buy-out in order to accelerate the future growth of the business.

Established in 2000, 7city is a global training provider primarily servicing the top 100 financial institutions. The company delivers courses to over 20,000 delegates each year, both in the classroom and via state of the art distance learning solutions. 7city’s world class faculty and supporting team of over 110 employees, are based at training centres in London and New York with a third centre scheduled to be opened in Singapore in 2008. 7city has been in the Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track for the past two years and the company recently won the “Learning Innovation of the Year” at the World of Learning Awards.

7city has two core offerings; exam training where they are market leaders in both benchmark
regulatory exams and professional qualifications offered by institutes such as the SII, ACCA,
CFA® and FINRA. The exam training offering also includes the highly acclaimed Certificate in
Quantitative Finance launched in conjunction with Dr Paul Wilmott. Secondly, 7city provides
bespoke financial product and professional development solutions, ranging from 8 week
graduate programmes to annual core curriculums customized for each client.

Gresham’s backing will facilitate increased investment in both the London and New York teams
and the current and future range of training programmes for 7city’s clients.

Simon Hemley, Partner at Gresham, comments, “We are delighted to be backing a highly motivated management team. 7city’s strong service offering was consistently described as best in class through our commercial referencing, and we are extremely excited by this opportunity.”

Paul Shaw Chief Executive of 7city adds “Over the past 7 years we have become a truly global provider. The team at Gresham has a track record second to none when partnering with highly successful companies and 7city will be able to utilise their financial and strategic acumen to continue our impressive growth. Our key goal has always been to raise the standards of learning and development as we continue to expand our geographical and product offerings. With Gresham’s support we will be able to consistently achieve this goal.”

Christian Bruning, Mike Henebery and Simon Hemley led the deal from Gresham’s London office. Richard Atkins as Executive Chairman, and Paul Marson-Smith and James Barbour-Smith of Gresham, joined the board at completion.

Debt facilities were provided by The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Relevant Gresham business support service deals include Swift, SThree and Tribal Group.