Kelley Blue Book has been arming car buyers and sellers with vehicle pricing information since 1926, but the Financial Times claims that the privately owned company is looking to sell, with wo sources familiar with the matter saying KBB has hired a bank to handle the sale.

Interested in buying? Plan to have somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million to $1 billion on hand. You'll also likely have to bid against some of the industry's heaviest hitters. One of the news-leaking bankers tabs AutoTrader as the lead bidder, with both eBay and Google likely to be in the fold. Since nobody from KBB is commenting on the record, we don't know why the company is selling, but the KBB.com website has experienced a decline in traffic from nine million visits per month to about seven million over the past three years. KBB is family owned, though no members of the Kelley family currently work in executive management at the company.


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