Mumbai: JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and two private-equity funds will take over SLM Corporation, the US student-loan provider, popularly known as Sallie Mae, in a $25-billion deal.

The funds plan to take 50.2 per cent of the company while JPMorgan and Bank of America will each have 24.9 per cent, the companies said in a statement.

The take-over group, which included JC Flowers & Co., Friedman Fleischer & Lowe LLC and the banks, offered $60 a share, or 28 per cent more than the April 13 closing price of $46.76, for Reston, Virginia-based Sallie Mae.

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase will each invest $2.2 billion while J.C. Flowers and Friedman Fleischer & Lowe will commit $4.4 billion to the business, according to the statement.

The agreement comes just days after Sallie Mae said it would pay $2 million and adopt a new code of conduct in a settlement with New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, who is probing deceptive loan practices among lenders and college financial aid officers.

Demand for student loans in the US has surged an average 27 per cent each of the last six years as more students borrow to attend universities such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Students at US colleges borrow an estimated $85 billion annually to finance school costs, and the loans are considered safe because of government guarantees.

Sallie Mae''s independent board members backed the transaction and recommended that shareholders approve it, the statement said. The management will continue to lead the company, which will remain based in Reston.

Sallie Mae manages $142 billion in loans to almost 10 million student and parent customers. It also manages more than $15 billion in 529 college-savings plans.

A US government-sponsored agency until becoming independent at the end of 2004, Sallie Mae is believed to have $67 billion in bonds and loans outstanding.

Sallie Mae, which is due to report first-quarter earnings on April 24, said in January that its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 96 per cent to $18.1 million because of a decline in the value of financial contracts it uses to protect against swings in interest rates.