Cengage Learning Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection more than five years after a buyout led by Apax Partners LLP left the textbook publisher with about $5.8 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt, Cengage said yesterday. The company, which bills itself as the second-biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., listed more than $1 billion in assets in a court filing. In 2007, private-equity group Apax led a $7.75 billion acquisition of Cengage from Thomson Reuters Corp. Apax is an investment adviser for funds worth more than $40 billion, the company said.
