Ashridge and Hult form strategic alliance

Dubai, UAE - 8th July 2014: Ashridge Business School and Hult International Business School have announced, subject to final legal confirmation, an agreement to enter into a strategic alliance. In the short term, the two organisations will be collaborating closely and in the longer term, the aim is to merge the top management across the two organisations.

The vision is to create the world's most relevant business school for employers. By bringing together Ashridge's expertise in executive and organisation development and research with Hult's global reach and scale in degree programmes, the alliance seeks to provide full service business education for global organisations.

The alliance will be able to offer employers an integrated, multi-location and multi-language portfolio of executive and organisation development, research and degree programmes. Significant investment will be made in each of these areas:

• Executive and organisation development : Expand Ashridge's highly ranked executive education capability to serve corporate clients all around the world through new locations
• Research: Build on Ashridge's research capability with particular emphasis on two areas: (1) insights relevant to the needs of corporate executives and (2) the effectiveness of management education
• Degree programmes: Expand the combined range of undergraduate and graduate programmes, including new online offerings

Under this strategic alliance, Ashridge and Hult will remain for the foreseeable future as separate entities, with their own brands, programmes and management. The discussions leading to the alliance have been led by the Governors of the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust, the charity under which the business school operates.

The alliance will be a leading force in management education focused on blending business practice with business theory.  The alliance will be highly ranked across all major business education categories and have campuses around the world.

“By combining Ashridge's expertise in organisation development and Hult's strength in developing individual leaders, our ambitious vision is to become the best and most relevant provider of leadership development in the world,” said Dr Stephen Hodges, President, Hult International Business School.

“The alliance brings together complementary organisations, both of which are run by business people for business people. We share a philosophy that learning has to be informed by the realities of business, as well as the theory,” said Kai Peters, CEO, Ashridge.