Sabre Holdings agreed to be acquired by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group for $32.75 per share in cash

. The $5 billion "definitive merger agreement" is expected to close "early in the second quarter of 2007," according to Sabre, which plans to maintain the current management team. By becoming a private company, Sabre expects to achieve "greater flexibility to invest with a long-term perspective rather than managing to short-term Wall Street expectations [and] compete more effectively with our private competitors and give us the opportunity to have more flexibility in our customer interactions." The proposed sale follows last week's announcement by Travelport that it agreed to acquire Worldspan in a deal that would reduce the number of primary global distribution systems to three.