Market leaders

Our table of the 20 biggest chains shows that one major shift has changed the pecking order since the summer. Nord Anglia has leaped up the ranks thanks to its purchase of the Bright Horizons group, showing that if a nursery group wants to increase its share of the branded market, the fast way to do it is to buy someone else.

In the summer 2001 issue of Nursery Chains, when we first compiled the table from the information provided for the directory, Nord Anglia was the 12th largest private nursery provider, while Bright Horizons was the ninth. Nord Anglia, a large private education company with a range of interests, decided the time was right to enlarge its Princess Christian nursery division. As a result the smaller nursery provider of the two has absorbed the larger, emerging as the sixth biggest group in the country. If Nord Anglia fulfils its stated intention of doubling the number of its nurseries in the next two years - which would take it from 2,149 places to over 4,000 - its place in the table may well rise higher still.