By Dominique Vidalon
PARIS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - French glass bottle makerVerallia said on Monday it could raise up to 1 billion euros($1.10 billion) in an initial public offering in Paris laterthis month, in the country's biggest stock market flotation sofar this year.
Verallia, which supplies containers to brands like chocolatespread maker Nutella, said the funds raised would give it scopeto make acquisitions and provide liquidity to sellingshareholders.
They include U.S. private equity firm Apollo, which boughtcontrol of the company in 2015.
Verallia set an indicative price range of between 26.50euros and 29.50 euros per share for the IPO, giving it a marketvalue of 3.1-3.5 billion euros and an enterprise value of up to5.3 billion euros, including debt, CEO Michel Giannuzzi told aconference call.
Verallia said the initial size of the global offering forthe sale of a maximum of 34.4 million shares would raise around911 million euros ($1 billion) based on the low end of theindicative range.
At the high end of the range, and provided an over-allotmentoption is exercised, the IPO would raise 1 billion euros.
The final pricing of the sale is expected on Oct. 3 withthe shares due to start trading on Oct.8.
Verallia said Horizon Parent Holding, a holding company inwhich Apollo has a 90% stake and French state-owned bankBPIFrance a 10% stake, would retain a controlling 60.6% stake.
BPI has committed to invest 40 million euros in theinternational offering and BWSA, a Brazilian investment company,will invest 275 million euros. BWSA, which will end up with astake of at least 7%, will be offered a board seat.
Verallia will potentially be the largest IPO on Euronext'sParis stock market since June 2017 when SocieteGenerale floated a stake in its car leasing arm ALDAutomotive that valued the firm at more than 5 billion euros.
Verallia, the world's third largest maker of glass bottlesand jars, also supplies brands such as Dom Perignon champagne.($1 = 0.9108 euros)(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Sarah White and Jane Merriman)