Travel reservations giant Amadeus has hired a trio of banks as global bookrunners for a planned initial public offering (IPO) next year, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The progress towards a stock-market listing -- which would be one of Spain's largest ever -- comes as rival Travelport also looks to revive its own, pre-credit crunch IPO plans.

Amadeus, which is already working with Rothschild [ROT.UL] as an independent adviser, has picked Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley as bookrunners, the people said.

Amadeus's owners may seek to raise about 2 billion euros ($2.98 billion) from the sale of both new and existing shares in a Madrid listing, one of the people said.

A share sale of that size would make the listing Spain's third-largest ever in nominal terms, and the biggest since Oct. 2007, according to Thomson Reuters data.

A further group of banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, BNP Paribas and Santander are likely to help syndicate the equity as lead managers, another person said.

Amadeus is controlled by private equity firms BC Partners and Cinven with 52.8 percent, Air France with 23.14 percent and Iberia and Lufthansa with 11.57 percent each.

Amadeus was delisted four years ago when BC Partners and Cinven bought their stake from the three airlines.

Amadeus, BC and Cinven declined to comment.

MORE THAN GREEN SHOOTS

Travelport, owned by Blackstone Group, has also met with banks to select a group to run its own London IPO, people familiar with the matter said.

On Sunday, Britain's Independent newspaper said UBS, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Barclays Capital had been appointed to manage a listing.

In December 2007, sources had said Blackstone filed for a London listing of Travelport, led by UBS, which it hoped could fetch about $2 billion.

Blackstone Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman, who is exploring up to 8 stock-market listings, said on Wednesday he was seeing more than green shoots of economic recovery.

Blackstone and Travelport representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.

($1=.6710 EURO)

(Reporting by Quentin Webb and Daisy Ku in London and Andres Gonzalez in Madrid; Editing by David Cowell)

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