In the BreakingViews column in last weekend's Wall Street Journal, there was extensive speculation that Mayor Bloomberg could sell his 79% stake in Bloomberg LP, his closely-held financial information business, if he wins re-election as New York City Mayor next month (which is all but a done deal, we hear). According to BreakingViews, "nothing motivates Michael Bloomberg more than philanthropy," but in order to get into the "charitable realm of a Bill Gates," Bloomberg needs to cash in his shares and convert his paper wealth into cold, hard cash. Then, he can start handing out dollars like there's no tomorrow.

Which led the folks at BreakingViews to do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations:

"Although Bloomberg's finances are not public, one can extrapolate a value for the firm. It has 200,000 clients paying around $21,000 a year, implying revenue of about $4.2 billion. Put that on a multiple of three times (in line with rival Thomson) and it's worth $12.6 billion. Vector in a 30% control premium and it could sell for about $16 billion, with nearly $12.64 billion for Hizzoner."

Who would buy Bloomberg LP? According to the WSJ, maybe Dow Jones or Reuters, but not likely. Probably Thomson, Reed Elsevier or McGraw-Hill. Or maybe, just maybe, a big Internet player like Yahoo, Google or Microsoft.

(Photo credit: CNN)