Blackstone Group LP, manager of the world’s biggest buyout fund, is leading an investor group in a $14.9 billion bid to acquire Italian mobile telephone company Wind SpA, sources familiar with the matter said.

New York-based Blackstone is making an offer for a company with about 11 million customers and annual revenue of more than about $5.2 billion, said the sources, who declined to be identified.

Enel SpA, Wind’s owner and Italy’s biggest utility, may get other bids. Earlier today, the New York Times said a group led by Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, also submitted a proposal for Wind.

An acquisition by the Blackstone-led group would rank among the largest by managers of funds set up to make takeovers. Buyout firms, which finance corporate takeovers mostly with borrowed money, spent a record $180 billion on purchases last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“We need bigger funds if private-equity firms are going” to keep making acquisitions as large as the plan for Wind, said Thomas Kubr, managing director of Capital Dynamics Inc., which has raised about $6 billion to invest in buyout, venture capital, and real estate funds.

The Blackstone-led offer includes about $1.9 billion of cash and the rest is in assumed debt, the people said. A Blackstone spokesman, John Ford, declined to comment. Mediobanca SpA, Italy’s largest investment bank, was hired by Blackstone to advise on the possible takeover, the people said. A Mediobanca spokeswoman, Lorenza Pigozzi, also declined to comment.

Enel’s chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, last month said the Rome-based utility plans to sell Wind by October 2006. Enel has devoted about 13 billion euros to Wind since it was founded in 1997. Wind is Italy’s no. 3 mobile phone company after Telecom Italia Mobile SpA and Vodafone Group Plc’s Italian unit.

Wind earned about $2 billion before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization in the past fiscal year, the Italian newspaper MF said on March 10.An Enel spokesman, who wouldn’t give his name, declined to comment yesterday.

“Enel’s been looking for an exit route from the telecommunications business that has slowly been giving signs of improvement,” said Manlio Bonafede, who helps manage $1.6 billion, including Enel shares, at Banca Leonardo SpA in Milan. “Its telecoms business has always been seen as an anomaly. Investors didn’t approve of Enel diverting its investment capital to telecommunications from its core business.”

Yesterday, Italian news agency Radiocor said Providence Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, and London based Permira Advisers Ltd. are working with Blackstone on the bid for Wind.