John Dolan, managing director, Carlyle Cardinal, Paul McElvaney, CEO, Learning Pool and Jonathan Cosgrave, managing director, Carlyle Group
Private equity firm Carlyle Cardinal Ireland (CCI) has invested an undisclosed sum in the Derry-based e-learning company Learning Pool to facilitate its UK expansion.
Learning Pool’s technology is used by more than 80pc of UK local councils to train staff to meet compliance and achieve performance improvement.
Founded by Paul McElvaney in 2006, Learning Pool employs 80 people and every day it serves a community of 1.25 million learners across 350 companies and government bodies.
Customer organisations include the NHS, the UK Houses of Parliament, Jury’s Inn, Capita, and British Sugar.
‘The ease of access for employees from mobile devices together with a more consistent experience means the e-learning market is growing at over 10pc each year’
– JOHN DOLAN, CCI
“We have always believed in Learning Pool’s potential to take on the world and have doubled our business over the last three years,” said McElvaney.
“In CCI, we believe we have exactly the right partners to help us develop our business and help us realise that potential. This investment will fast track our growth and allows us to build out our technology and content at a quicker pace for our customers’ benefit. I’m excited about the next phase of Learning Pool’s growth that will see us deliver more product innovation and significant expansion of our customer base and our team.”
Training budgets go online
CCI is a €292m private equity fund focused on growth capital and buyout investment opportunities across the island of Ireland.
Previous investments include Abtran, Carroll Cuisine, Lily O’Brien’s, Payzone and GSLS.
“The recent trend has been for companies to spend more of their training budgets online,” said John Dolan, managing director of CCI.
“The ease of access for employees from mobile devices together with a more consistent experience means the e-learning market is growing at over 10pc each year.
“Learning Pool is ideally placed to meet this demand with their online offering and training catalogues which companies can customise as they require. Effectively, Learning Pool provides its customers with a one-stop solution for their e-learning needs.”
