Media company Getty Images, which has risen to become the world's biggest supplier of photographs and video material, is offering itself for sale and could go for more than $1.5 billion, The New York Times reported today.
Citing unnamed sources briefed on the situation, the newspaper said the firm had hired investment broker Goldman Sachs to advise it on the transaction.
Potential buyers include private equity firms such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and others, the report said.
Final bids are due by the end of January, but a sale is not assured because the tighter credit conditions has made it harder to finance such deals, the paper noted.
Getty Images was founded in 1995 in Seattle and has grown through a series of acquisitions into a major picture distributor, which delivers its clients about 3.2 billion images each month, according to The Times.
Its main clients include advertising agencies and media companies. It has also branched out into video footage for use in television and Internet programming.
