ONE of Egypt’s wealthiest families will this week combine with UBS and leading private-equity firms to make an estimated €12.5 billion (£8.7 billion) bid for Wind, the Italian telecoms group owned by Enel, the energy giant.

Naguib Sawiris is the oldest of three brothers who run family companies that make up about 40% of the value of the Egyptian stock exchange. He is chief executive of the fast-growing Orascom Telecom, which operates in nine countries in the Middle East and Africa. Orascom has a secondary quotation in London, from where its international operations are run.

If it proceeds, the acquisition of Wind will be the largest European telecoms transaction since the Scandinavian merger of Telia and Sonera in 2001. It would also be one of the biggest leveraged buyouts of all time, and would involve a multi-billion euro debt issue for the bond markets.

Naguib Sawiris is part of the Weather Investments consortium, which is finalising its bid this weekend before submitting it to Enel within a few days. Sol Trujillo, former chief executive of Orange, is acting as an adviser to Sawiris. The consortium also includes Wilbur Ross, an American private-equity firm, and Philippe Nguyen, a French private-equity investor.

The Weather consortium is bidding against Blackstone, another American private- equity group, which is still trying to put together its bid team, having approached several other leading investment firms.

The two bidders are also competing against a third possibility: that Enel may seek to float the business. Some observers believe that Paulo Scaroni, the Enel chief executive, might favour this approach.

Enel’s board is expected to meet to consider the offers at the end of this month. Wind is the second-largest fixed-line telecoms operator in Italy, and has the third-largest mobile business, after Telecom Italia Mobile and Vodafone.

But many analysts believe that Wind has struggled under Enel’s bureaucratic ownership. The heavily indebted company has made a slow start in the 3G mobile market.

Sawiris, who is the largest single equity provider to the Weather consortium, is understood to believe that Wind needs a change of management.

Weather is being advised by UBS, which is also planning to lend money to the consortium. Should Weather win the auction, Sawiris could eventually seek to combine Wind with Orascom to create a mobile giant that will ring the Mediterranean basin. He has spoken of turning Orascom into one of the world’s largest mobile-phone groups, and hopes to have 100m subscribers by 2010.

The Sawiris family also controls Orascom Construction Industries, run by Nassef, and Orascom Hotels and Development, run by Samih. The brothers’ father, Onsi Sawiris, 74, sits as a director of all three companies. Forbes recently estimated the family’s wealth at $5.2 billion.

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