Together, the brands will have a reach of over 20 million prospective international students each year.

Universities will see a “significant” expansion of options to engage with prospective students, both in person and online, the partners said.

“Bringing together the world’s leading student recruitment events business with one of the world’s largest and most renowned study abroad platforms is an incredibly exciting development at Times Higher Education,” Paul Howarth, CEO at THE, explained.

THE launched its student-facing division THE Student in May 2021 and has since partnered with a wide range of international education companies.

“Together we can transform the events landscape for students looking to study abroad – both in person and online – connecting them with institutions that best serve their requirements and helping them into international study across a wide range of destination countries,” Howarth added.

“Joining forces felt like a natural partnership given the popularity of THE’s university rankings and the need for prospective students to meet institutions at world-class virtual and physical events across the world,” Samir Zaveri, CEO and president of BMI, said.

“By coming together, millions of students using their platform will now be able to meet universities at BMI’s leading international education fairs.”

“The BMI team, headed by Samir Zaveri, Sangin Zaveri, Rupert Merrick and Philippe Person, have built one of the truly global brands in the international education sector,” Howarth said. “We have heard from hundreds of universities worldwide, and have found that BMI couldn’t be more highly regarded.”

The university data, rankings and content provider was acquired by Inflexion Private Equity in 2019. THE also acquired US news provider Inside Higher Ed earlier this year.

“The coming together of our brands and likeminded teams is a very natural fit”

“The acquisition will leverage THE Student’s extensive global engagement with millions of prospective international students, raising awareness of BMI’s unparalleled series of advisory and student recruitment events,” Patrick Hayes, THE chief development officer, said.

BMI has long been a “trusted partner” of the student-facing THE Student platform.

“The coming together of our brands and likeminded teams is a very natural fit,” he added. The companies also ran “very successful” virtual THE Student Fairs in partnership in Africa, India and Asia in 2021, Zaveri added.

“[The events] allowed us to see the massive student audience they reach. It also allowed us to fully understand how we can leverage this audience to further improve our current events and potentially launch new ones in key student recruitment countries and regions across the world.”

The BMI directors are all fully committed to remaining with the business, the partners added, while THE will collaborate with BMI on event content and unlocking its brand reach, unique data and insights for their hundreds of thousands of annual event attendees.