Our Approach

Our values are summed up in one phrase – ‘partnership, innovation and community – delivered responsibly’.

Since being established in 1998, our strategy has focused on a partnership model.

We purposely designed our Group structure to ensure we are effective at developing, operating and managing our assets over the life of each concession, and we placed our entire portfolio on cost-effective long-term borrowing, effectively removing all refinancing risk.

In 2013, we made our debut £382.1 million public bond issuance. With a multicurrency programme size of £5 billion, the issuance was the first of its kind within the higher education sector. It illustrated our ongoing ambition to bring long-term institutional investment to UK higher education.

We launched a further tranche of £149.7 million index-linked senior secured notes under our investment-grade programme in 2014.

In 2018, we listed on The International Stock Exchange (TISE) enabling us to convert into a UK ‘Real Estate Investment Trust’ (REIT).

Today, our strategy remains the same simple one – to bring together the longevity of university business models, with cost-effective long-dated borrowing, in long-term partnerships for the mutual benefit of universities, students and investors alike.

We plan to continue to grow our portfolio, which now has over 37,000 rooms in operation, under construction or at preferred bidder stage with 16 university partners, and to actively build resilience across our Company by remaining true to the model that we developed two decades ago.