It was last Autumn when The Thomson Corporation announced its intention to divest itself of its Thomson Learning Division. The rumored asking price was $5 billion. Yesterday Thomson made it official that the buyer is equity fund Apax Partners and pension fund OMERS Capital Partners. Must have been a bidding war for Learning, proving it more valuable than Thomson thought, since the sale price is $7.75 billion. That’s quite a hefty premium and will no doubt bolster Thomson’s proposed acquisition of Reuters.

Thomson Learning has always struck me as a hodge podge of companies — it includes Wadsworth, Delmar Learning, Gale, Heinle, Brooks/Cole, South-Western, and Nelson Canada. If it were up to me, which it obviously isn’t, I’d probably split it up and sell off pieces. Gale could certainly be split up into the three entities that originally formed it. I’d sort of like to see IAC reconstituted as a pure database company. The Gale Directories could possibly be grouped with other book publishing pieces of the ex-Thomson Learning.

It’s too early to know the intentions of Apax and OMERS. The deal won’t close until the third quarter of 2007.