Reuters Exclusive: Education company Blackboard seeks $3 billion sale - sources - LIANA B. BAKER, GREG ROUMELIOTIS AND MIKE STONE, Reuters

Blackboard Inc, a U.S. software company that provides learning tools for high school and university classrooms, is exploring a sale that it hopes could value it at as much as $3 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter. Blackboard's majority owner, private equity firm Providence Equity Partners LLC, has hired Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) to run an auction for the company, the people said this week. Blackboard has annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around $200 million, some of the people added. Two of the people said that Blackboard could fetch a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA, up to $3.4 billion, based on current multiples of subscription-based software companies. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/28/us-blackboard-providence-idUSKCN0Q226R20150728