Canadian conglomerate Thomson Corp. announced Friday it would divest its education division to private equity firm Apax Partners and pension fund manager OMERS Capital Partners for 7.75 billion US dollars. The sale covers Thomson's higher education, careers, and library reference holdings, including the Thomson Learning brands Wadsworth, Gale, Delmar Learning, Heinle, Brooks/Cole, and South-Western. A separate consortium advised by the two buyers will acquire Nelson Canada, with OMERS holding a majority stake in that Canadian educational publisher.
Thomson described the divestiture as consistent with its strategy to redirect resources toward businesses better aligned with its growth model. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2007, pending regulatory approval.
The sale comes as Thomson, the world's third-largest provider of financial news and data, pursues a roughly 17.49 billion dollar takeover of Reuters. If completed, the combined entity would surpass Bloomberg to lead the financial information market with about 34 percent market share. The Thomson family's holding company, Woodbridge, would control approximately 53 percent of the merged firm.
Apax manages around 30 billion dollars in global assets, while OMERS oversees 48 billion dollars on behalf of 372,000 active and retired members across 900 Canadian companies.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2007, in its own words.