EXCERPTS

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.

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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.

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

- reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald