NEW YORK (AP) — Reader's Digest Association Inc., an iconic publishing and direct-marketing company, has agreed to be purchased by an investor group led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC, a private equity firm, for $1.6 billion.

The deal, announced Thursday, brings to an end a 16-year run for Reader's Digest as a publicly traded company. Reader's Digest went public in 1990 but had been controlled by a charitable foundation set up by the company's founders until 2002.

Ripplewood is paying $17 in cash for each Reader's Digest share, a premium of 10 percent over the stock's closing price Wednesday.

Ripplewood already has other publishing and direct marketing businesses, including the Weekly Reader magazine distributed to schools, The World Almanac, as well as the Time Life business, a former Time Inc. property that is a direct marketer of music, books and other products. Time Inc. is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

It was not yet clear whether the deal would result in management changes at the Pleasantville, N.Y.-based company, and representatives from both Ripplewood and Reader's Digest declined to comment.