The deadline passed last Tuesday but the few days grace granted to potential BusinessWeek buyer Bloomberg LP may have paid off. Citing execs “familiar with the situation” BW‘s Jon Fine reports that the bid is in—and even though he hasn’t seen the numbers—and he expects Bloomberg to take the lead. Then again, as Fine reminds us, he thought Lazard Chairman Bruce Wasserstein was the leader up until the night Wasserstein opted not stick with the process. Bloomberg, founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, certainly has the money and, if the bid is comparable to that of PE firm OpenGate Capital or any non-journalism bidder, would seem to be the likely choice for parent company McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP). Fine doesn’t think Joe Mansueto, founder of Morningstar and owner of Inc. and Fast Company, submitted a final bid.

Bloomberg Chief Content Officer Norman Pearlstine told attendees at our FOBM conference last October that in the “immediate future” the company wouldn’t be making “the major kind of acquisition that gets written about” but that “we also have signaled a willingness to look at acquisitions.” It’s been nearly a year since those comments ...