With 2U deal off, Byju’s ambitions suffer a setback

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Editor's note: The Byju’s-2U deal is off. Byju Raveendran said as much in a recent interview with Moneycontrol. “2U is an acquisition offer we made after getting a $2.4 billion financing commitment from one of the largest banks. As it is a public company, we can’t even make an offer before having the financing in place. We didn’t get the deal. But 2U is still not sold. It is still available…” In the first sentence, Raveendran says Byju’s made an offer, but in the very next, it suddenly isn’t clear whether it did and whether it had actually pulled together the financing. It was Bloomberg that first reported in May that the Bengaluru-based company was in talks to acquire “a US target and likely to bid for either Chegg or 2U”. A few months later, Byju’s was reported to have secured over $2 billion in acquisition financing and made a $15 per share offer to the board of the US-listed 2U.  But an official announcement on the transaction never came from either party. The 2U stock, which rose 30% in the week …