Qatar's Ooredoo, formerly Qatar Telecom, has lined up a group of 10 banks to provide a multi-billion dollar finance package to support its bid for Vivendi's stake in Maroc Telecom, bankers working on the deal said.

Vivendi wants to sell its 53% stake in the Moroccan telco to help reduce its debts - a deal seen as more critical than before after Vivendi failed to sell video game firm Activision Blizzard and Brazilian telecom unit GVT as part of a much-heralded strategic shift.

Potential bidders need to show they can come up with cash to cover the $6 billion market value of the stake, as well as fund the buyout option which minority shareholders must be offered.

Ooredoo has not told its banks how much debt it will raise in total, instead asking them to commit around $1 billion each from which it will take the necessary amount, three bankers said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the talks are private.

Ooredoo was not immediately available for comment.

Underlying Ooredoo's thinking on its finance package is a Feb. 22 note from Standard & Poor's, warning that it could downgrade the firm's A rating by one notch if it took on too much debt to fund future acquisitions.

Such considerations may mean that Ooredoo funds part of any acquisition with its own cash - it had 14.8 billion riyals ($4.1 billion) at the end of 2012 - or through equity, having raised $1.9 billion in a rights issue last year to support stake hikes in Iraq's Asiacell and Kuwait's Wataniya.

The Qatari firm is battling with the United Arab Emirates' Etisalat over the Maroc Telecom stake, after South Korea's KT Corp dropped out of the race, sources told Reuters on Monday.

Etisalat is set to sign an $8 billion loan facility next week with as many as 16 banks to help fund its stake bid, bankers told Reuters on Wednesday.

Those bidding for the stake need to submit a binding bid by April 22.

Favourable terms

The group of 10 banks Ooredoo has assembled consists of Qatari as well as international lenders, and any eventual loan facility will be drawn equally from all banks, the banking sources said.

JP Morgan Chase is advising Ooredoo on the bid, while Qatar National Bank is administering the finance package.

A number of financing options are being considered, including a short-term loan to be refinanced later or a long-term loan and a bond, either to fund the acquisition itself or to take out loan debt later, the sources said.

The pricing on the loan is expected to be favourable to the company, the bankers said. "Pricing is very tight as you would expect from a top tier name but you still see banks willing to fund," said one.

Ooredoo last tapped the bond market in January, when it raised $1 billion from a two-part issue of 15-year and 30-year paper. The former was trading to yield 162.5 basis points over z-spreads, with the latter at 182.2 basis points over z-spreads at 1515 GMT, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The z-spread expresses relative value by calculating the number of basis points that need to be added to a zero-coupon yield curve to make the bond's discounted cash flows equal its present value.

Ooredoo also completed a $1 billion four-year revolving credit facility at the beginning of April, funded by 14 banks, to be used for general business purposes and to help refinance an existing $1.25 billion facility.