Italy's Risanamento poised to sell nine properties in Paris

MILAN, April 9 (Reuters) - Italian real estate company Risanamento is set to sign a deal on Wednesday to sell eight properties in Paris to British fund Chelsfield/The Olayan Group and another Paris property to shareholder Luigi Zunino, a source familiar with the matter said.

Risanamento had said on Monday it would accept an offer from Zunino to buy two of the properties. The company had originally given approval to Chelsfield to buy all nine properties for 1.23 billion euros ($1.70 billion).

A company spokesman said Risanamento would issue a press release when the sale was completed, and had no further comment.

Risanamento, which is selling the properties to reduce its 1.8 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in debt, had to be rescued by Italian banks Intesa Sanpaolo (Frankfurt: IES.F - news) and UniCredit (Berlin: CRIH.BE - news) during the financial crisis.

They became Risanamento's largest shareholders after a court made them convert debt to equity.

Intesa was not immediately available to comment and UniCredit had no immediate comment.

Zunino, who was left with a 25 percent stake after the rescue, made a joint offer with U.S.-based fund Colony Capital in February to buy Risanamento shares from the banks.

($1 = 0.7249 Euros) (Reporting by Claudia Cristoferi, writing by Isla Binnie, editing by Lisa Jucca and Jane Merriman)