The company's owner, Knowledge Universe, has appointed investment bank Rothschild to handle the sale of the group's 214 sites, which are expected to fetch more than £200m. The sale will include debt currently carried by the company.
Busy Bees Benefits, which is a provider of childcare vouchers and a separate business owned by Busy Bees Group chief executive John Woodward, is not part of the discussions.
Busy Bees has just emerged from a period of dynamic growth. Last year it acquired the nine settings of Sussex-based Early Years Childcare and the 71-strong national nursery group Just Learning. This pushed its number of sites up to 214, offering a total of 19,500 nursery places.
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