The sovereign investment fund of the Qatari Royal Family is being lined up to acquire a possible 15% shareholding in Eir, The Irish Times reports this morning.

With an expected stock market reflotation of the former Eircom still some time away, the company’s second-largest shareholder, the US fund York Capital, is understood to be selling its holding to the Qatari Investment Authority.

It has an investment fund of some €225bn. Eir is not expected to be floated during the next six years.

The fund previously explored taking a stake in Spain's Telefonica two years ago and was in talks to fund Three's abandoned attempt to buy 02 in the UK.

Eir has had sovereign wealth shareholders before, Singapore Technologies Telemedia owned by the state’s Investment Fund Temasek, controlled Eircom from 2010 to 2012.

The paper also reports that Denis O’ Brien’s Digicel Group is among the bidders for Italian mobile telecoms assets such as frequencies and mobile towers being sold to accommodate the merger of the Italy-based operations of Dutch Telco, Vimpelcom and Huchison Holdings of Hong Kong.