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LONDON – Monday 17th October 2011 - QA, the global training company that transforms performance through learning, today announced that it has acquired Aikona, one of the largest and most respected specialist project and programme management training organisations. The acquisition will strengthen QA’s market leading position in project management training and will deliver an enhanced service for the provision of customised training courses and consultancy for private and public sector organisations.

The acquisition is effective from 10th October 2011, and brings all of Aikona’s business to QA, from its public training courses to its national and international blue chip customer base.  All customers of the combined group will have access to the full portfolio of services from both organisations. This will include the UK’s widest range of technical, business applications, project and service management, and personal development courses, plus accredited project management courses for the world’s leading best practice methodologies including Agile, APM, PMI®, PRINCE2®, P3O®, PPS , MSP®, and MoR®. 

CEO of QA, William Macpherson, comments, “QA has always recognised that specialist knowledge and long standing relationships are vital components of outstanding customer service.  Adding Aikona’s twenty-five years of expertise to QA’s existing high-quality offering will help us continue to deliver our world class training programmes to customers in a wide range of locations around the globe at a competitive price.”

Macpherson continues, “This acquisition will help extend QA’s position as an industry leader and assist us in further developing our training provision in the areas of business, technical and professional skills and leadership behaviours.  Our combined strengths will give customers the most comprehensive blend of learning solutions and tools and the increased scale of the group will allow customers to tap into an even bigger pool of leading industry and training experts. For the UK, it will mean QA training is even more accessible, with training locations from Aberdeen to Exeter and the UK’s largest public schedule of courses.”

QA is one of the largest business learning providers; currently, the company delivers over 500,000 delegate days of training based upon 1,500 courses, with over 300 employed learning and subject specialists and 25 dedicated customer support people.