Pro Linguis, one of Switzerland’s oldest and largest education agencies which went into liquidation last month, is being acquired by StudyLingua AG, another Swiss language travel agency based in St Gallen.
Kaplan, which has owned the agency since 2008, has signed an agreement with StudyLingua, it said today. The sale, for an undisclosed amount, is expected to be completed effective June 30.
“Pro Linguis will be an excellent complement to our boutique agency”
The acquisition will greatly expand StudyLingua’s study travel portfolio, which currently stands at around 150 school partners worldwide.
“Pro Linguis will be an excellent complement to our boutique agency,” commented Simon Marcon, CEO of StudyLingua. “We will continue to focus on each individual student and will provide the same excellent levels of service that our customers have come to expect.”
Established in 1955, Pro Linguis has around 300 partner schools and has dealt with more than 160,000 customers.
It was acquired by Kaplan for an undisclosed amount from its previous owner and CEO Martin Pfister in 2008.
The news of its collapse followed a year of tough trading for Swiss agencies, largely due to currency fluctuations in key source markets.
Nevertheless, given the agency’s in the industry, the liquidation was described at the time as a “big surprise” by the president of the Swiss Association of Language Travel Agents, Claudio Cesarano.
Cesarano welcomed the news of the acquisition by StudyLingua, a SALTA member agency.
“We’re very happy that this brand will still exist in the Swiss market… and I’m glad it will stay in Swiss hands,” he told The PIE News.
However, he added that he was “quite surprised” a foreign player had not acquired the company.
“I would have guessed it would have made more sense for someone else to get into the Swiss market also because the Swiss market is quite mature… there will be tough competition, but at the same time I’m quite happy that it is a quality, SALTA agency that has acquired the traditional brand,” he explained.
