LONDON (Bloomberg) - Vin & Sprit AB, the Swedish owner of Absolut vodka, may be sold for about $6 billion in a government auction that begins next month, five people with direct knowledge of the planned transaction said.

Potential bidders, including Paris-based Pernod Ricard SA, Bacardi Ltd. of Bermuda and Illinois-based Fortune Brands Inc., will receive details of the auction by mid-October, the people said.

They declined to be named before a sale is final. Sweden's government put V&S up for sale last year, along with stakes in companies valued at 200bn kronor.

Vin & Sprit, created in 1917 as an alcohol monopoly, would give the new owner the second-most popular vodka in the US after Diageo Plc's Smirnoff. Vodka accounted for more than a fifth of all spirits sold in the US last year.

A sale of all of V&S would be the biggest liquor takeover since Pernod agreed to buy Allied Domecq Plc in April 2005.

"Absolut is very attractive, particularly in North America where the premium vodka market is a strong-growth category," said Trevor Stirling, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London.

V&S would be worth at least $5bn, based on a multiple of about 15 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, the people with knowledge of the plan said.

Assuming a higher multiple, V&S may be worth about $6bn, they said. Pernod paid 13.2 times Ebitda for Allied Domecq, or £9.6bn pounds including debt, Bloomberg data shows.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. analysts Ian Shackleton and David Belaunde estimate the company had Ebitda of $337 million last year. V&S did not disclose Ebitda figures for last year.

"The government has issued no timetable and doesn't comment on specific timing or prices" for asset sales, Mia Widell, a spokeswoman for Financial Markets Minister Mats Odell, said by telephone yesterday. "We're still in a preparation phase."

The government is unlikely to favour an initial public offering, particularly with the current volatility in the financial markets, the people familiar with the plan said.

They also said the state has not indicated whether it will sell all of V&S or just the business involving Absolut, which was created in 1979.

"If you strip out Absolut, you just have a Nordic spirits company that sells aquavit and some wines," Bernstein's Stirling said. "You wouldn't have companies lining up for that."

V&S, which also makes Cruzan rum, Plymouth gin and Fris and Level vodkas, had sales of 10.3bn kronor last year. Vodka accounts for about 60 percent of the parent's revenue. V&S Absolut Spirits, which includes Absolut and other international brands, made up more than 80 percent of earnings before interest and tax, Lehman said in a June 27 report.

Sales of Absolut, distilled at a single site in southern Sweden, rose an estimated 6.9 percent to 9.8m 9-litre cases last year, according to Impact Databank. Smirnoff rose 7.5 percent to 23 million cases on that basis in 2006.

Vodka accounted for $3.58bn in sales in the US last year, or 22 percent of all spirits sold, according to data compiled by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Pernod, the world's No. 2 liquor company and owner of the distribution rights to Stolichnaya vodka outside Russia, wants to buy all of V&S, spokeswoman Florence Taron said yesterday. Pernod has been in talks to acquire Stolichnaya since 2005. Chairman Patrick Ricard said it would be difficult to afford both Stolichnaya and Absolut.

Bacardi spokeswoman Pat Neal said in May that the maker of Grey Goose vodka sent a letter to Sweden's government requesting a meeting.

Fortune Brands, the maker of Jim Beam bourbon, would seek to expand Absolut in Russia, India and China if it gained the brand, CEO Norman Wesley said in an interview this month.

Fortune Brands and V&S already have an agreement to distribute Absolut in the US, and Wesley said a combination of the two companies would be a "natural extension" of their partnership.

Diageo CEO Paul Walsh in March said he would examine a purchase of V&S once it formally comes up for sale.

Diageo's ownership of Smirnoff may make it difficult for the London-based company to gain regulatory approval to buy V&S, the people familiar with the government's auction said.

Sweden's government, in power since October, approved plans in June to sell six state-owned companies, and this month named a council charged with examining disposals and giving advice.

The government is now in the "execution phase" of the sales, Odell, the financial markets minister, said on September 10.