Temple-Inland (NYSE:TIN), the Texas-based packaging, forest-products, real estate, and financial-services company, began the week by confirming that this is clearly the season for buyouts, restructurings, and outright breakups. On Monday morning, the company announced that it will be cut into three separate operations: corrugated packaging and building products; real estate; and financial services. It also plans to sell its timberlands.

The company's corrugated packaging and building products operations generated a combined $4.2 billion in revenues in 2006, three-fourths of the total $5.6 billion generated by the company. Of that $4.2 billion, nearly $3 billion came from corrugated packaging. The forest-products unit, which generated revenues of $1.24 billion last year, includes a wide range of building products such as lumber, particleboard, fiberboard, and gypsum wallboard. As such, its array of competitors includes Packaging Corporation of America (NYSE:PKG), Smurfit-Stone (NASDAQ:SSCC), Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE:LPX), and Eagle Materials (NYSE:EXP).

The financial-services arm consists of Guaranty Bank, an $18 billion full-service bank with nearly 150 offices in Texas and California and 2006 revenues of $1.17 billion. The company acquired a controlling interest in the bank in 1971, and since 1987, it's added more than 20 savings institutions in the two states in which the bank operates.

The real estate segment operates under the name Forestar Real Estate Group. It generated $175 million in sales last year from a variety of residential and commercial projects; in addition, it owns 205,000 acres of high-value land near Atlanta, Ga. As part of the breakup, Temple-Inland also intends to sell off roughly 1.8 million acres of timberland in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia.

While the financial terms of the sales have not been determined, it appears that most of the proceeds will go to the company's shareholders. As Kenneth M. Jastrow, II, the company's chairman and CEO, said in announcing the breakup, "Each of the three public companies -- manufacturing, financial services, and real estate -- will be well positioned in the marketplace, have an appropriate capital structure, and will benefit from greater strategic focus."

Temple-Inland has a rich and interesting history of its own, beginning in 1925 with the founding of The Inland Box Company. For a decade, starting in 1973, the company was owned by Time Inc., now a unit of Time Warner (NYSE:TWX).

Obviously, the market liked the news from Temple-Inland on Monday; it boosted the company's shares more than 7% to $62.01 on the day. I think that Fools should like it, too, and should keep a close eye on the post-restructuring Temple-Inland. Once the restructuring dust has settled, I believe it will emerge as a focused, low-cost operator in an attractive industry.

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Fool contributor David Lee Smith does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned. He welcomes your questions or comments.