IUBH was founded in 1998 at Bad Honnef and has been continuously growing since July 2007, the university was taken over by the private equity firm Auctus (Munich). In 2008, IU opened a second location in Bad Reichenhall. In July 2009, the Science Council institutionally reaccredited the university for ten years. The university has been giving distant educational programmes at Bachelors and Masters levels since 2011 November. In mid-2013, IU merged with the Adam Ries University of Applied Sciences, thereby adding Dual Study to its study models. With the establishment of the IU Corporate Programmes in 2014, the rectorate was expanded to include the position of Prorector for Corporate Programmes. On December 10, 2015, the parent company of IU, Career Partner GmbH, was taken over by the Apollo Group; since November 2017 Career Partner GmbH has been owned by the British private equity investor group Oakley.[3] In March 2016, IU merged with the University of International Economics & Logistics (HIWL) and since then has been offering the Dual Study model in Bremen under the name IU.