Private-equity firm Apollo Global Management in the next few days will be announcing a deal to buy McGraw-Hill’s education business, The Post has learned.
The price is expected to be between $2 billion and $3 billion, sources said.
McGraw-Hill in December 2011 said it was splitting its business in two — one focused on financial markets, including Standard & Poor’s, and the other focusing on education business, including textbooks that it was planning to spin out to shareholders.
The Post reported exclusively in July that McGraw was also quietly seeing if it could sell the education business and was working with Evercore Partners and Goldman Sachs.
While Apollo for weeks has been in exclusive talks it has only recently become clear that McGraw will indeed sell the business and not spin it out.
One banker thinks Apollo, despite working with former McGraw-Hill Education President Peter Davis, may end up getting schooled.
“Think about textbooks and government budgets getting crushed,” the banker said, believing it is a very risky space.
McGraw-Hill Education reported that its third quarter revenue fell by 11 percent.
John Paulson and Guggenheim Partners in 2010 invested in rival Houghton Mifflin only to be “obliterated” when the textbook publisher this year went bankrupt, the banker said.
A McGraw-Hill Education growth area is K-12 testing in reading and math.
Apollo and McGraw-Hill both declined to comment.
jkosman@nypost.com
Apollo hits the books
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Apollo hits the books
