UPDATE 1-Buyout firms bow out of German broadcaster ProsiebenSat.1

ProsiebenSat.1 shareholders KKR and Permira will sell on the open market the remaining 17 percent stake they hold jointly in the German broadcaster, completing a gradual exit.

The two buyout firms will place the 36.3 million shares they own in ProSiebenSat.1 - worth 1.27 billion euros ($1.73 billion) at Thursday's closing price - in an accelerated bookbuilding process with institutional investors that will start immediately, KKR said in a statement late on Thursday.

"The share sale is the logical last step in the exit of the former majority owners, which invested in the media company in 2006," KKR said in the statement.

KKR and Permira at the time bought a controlling stake in ProSiebenSat.1 and merged it with SBS Broadcasting, a media group they had acquired a year earlier. Since then they have been disposing of their investment in stages.

The shares have advanced 47 percent over the last 12 months, outperforming the 41 percent gain in the STOXX Europe 600 Media index.

The exit, to be managed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, would give the broadcaster a 100 percent free float ownership, boosting its chances of getting promoted to Germany's blue-chip DAX.

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