July 5 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris may sell the Italian telephone towers held by his Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA wireless business to help cut debt, said three people with knowledge of his plans.

Sawiris's Weather Investments Srl contacted investment banks and may name an adviser on the potential sale soon, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The towers are valued at 1 billion to 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) at a minimum, one of the people said.

``It was always a possibility that they would want to sell these,'' said James Ward, who has a ``substantial amount'' of Wind bonds in the funds he helps manage as head of European high yield at Axa Investment Managers in Paris. ``The question is whether they get a good price.'' Axa has the equivalent of about $115 billion of fixed-income securities under management.

The sale of the towers is part of a refinancing plan that will help Rome-based Wind cut its borrowing costs and give it longer to repay debt. Sawiris's holding company bought Wind, Italy's third-biggest provider of mobile-phone services, from Italian utility Enel SpA in 2005 in a deal valued at about 12.2 billion euros.

Wind is asking debt holders to allow ``the potential sale of all or part of its existing tower business,'' it said in a financing document June 29. It will use the proceeds to repay senior debt or invest in its business, the document said. The company also is seeking a waiver of bondholder agreements to allow the refinancing of about 8 billion euros of debt.

Leasing Space

The refinancing will reduce the average cost of the company's debt, according to a July 3 report from Moody's Investors Service.

Wind has more than 10,000 base stations, according to its web site. A spokeswoman for Sawiris in Italy declined to comment. Buyers of telecommunications infrastructure assets such as antenna towers typically use them as a source of cash to make dividend and interest payments.

Wind, after selling the towers, would have to lease space on them from the new owner, said Ivan Palacios, a debt analyst at Moody's in Madrid. The company may want to benefit from the tax deductibility of the leases, he said in an e-mail.

``The assets sold could be used by other operators who would also have to pay a fee to the new owner of the towers,'' Palacios said. ``This would allow the new owner to reduce the costs charged to each operator, and therefore, it could improve Wind's cost structure.''

The refinancing would increase Wind's debt to 5.2 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from 4.2 times, Moody's said in the July 3 report.

Ratings Affirmed

Wind plans to repay a 1.8 billion-euro subordinated pay-in- kind loan issued by Wind Acquisition Holdings Finance SpA, the entity that acquired Wind, with senior debt from Wind itself that will rank ahead of bonds for repayment.

Moody's this week affirmed its rating on Wind's long-term debt of Ba3, three levels below investment grade. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services affirmed its B+ long-term debt rating, four steps below investment grade.

Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, an Australian investment fund, agreed in April to buy the U.K. wireless network unit of National Grid Plc for 2.5 billion pounds to combine it with the Arqiva broadcast business.

It also led a group in 2004 that bought the U.K. transmission towers of cable company NTL Inc., now called Virgin Media Inc., for 1.27 billion pounds.

Through holding company Weather Investments, Sawiris acquired TIM Hellas Telecommunications SA, Greece's third-biggest mobile-phone company, this year, part of plans to become the dominant operator in the region. Weather also owns stakes in Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the largest wireless company by customers in the Middle East and North Africa. Sawiris is chief executive officer of Orascom.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ambereen Choudhury in London achoudhury@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: July 5, 2007 04:34 EDT