Blackstone owns the 17screen Cineworld complex on Dublin's Parnell Street.

Vue, which is owned by Boston Ventures and Clarity Partners, owns a 14-screen cinema at Dublin's Liffey Valley retail park. The two are consistently rated as among top 10 revenue-generating cinemas in either Ireland or the UK, with 1.8m visits to the Parnell Street multiplex last year and 1.4m to the Liffey Valley screens.

Blackstone has engaged investment bank Lehman Brothers to review its options for Cineworld, the largest operator in the UK. These options could include a trade sale or even further investment. Vue Entertainment has engaged Citigroup for the same purpose.

An Irish cinema insider said the two venues would attract strong interest from operators such as Dublinbased Ward Anderson, which owns the Savoy and controls almost half the country's cinema market. Others likely to be interested include Spurling group, which has a strong regional presence as well as a stake in the 'Movies@' business with the Dublin-based O'Gorman family. Storm Cinemas, which has multiplex operations in Limerick, Portlaoise and Cavan, could be another candidate.

The Irish cinema market is one of Europe's most buoyant, with admissions soaring in the past decade. Last year, 16.4m visits were made to Irish cinemas, but that figure was down on 2004 and 2003 when admissions stood at 17.26m and 17.43m respectively. The drop was put down to the low number of highquality releases. The industry is expecting an improved performance this year, with films such as The Da Vinci Code starring Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible: 3 hitting screens.

Any sale of Cineworld's or Vue Entertainment's assets in the UK is also likely to pique the interest of the Ward Anderson group. Last October, the company spent 80m to acquire 11 former UCI and Odeon cinemas, including the high-profile Empire Leicester Square in London, from Terra Firma Capital Partners. It spent an estimated 40m this year to buy six Cineworld outlets in the UK.

The Liffey Valley cinema was previously owned by South African group, Ster Century, whose shareholders were Primedia and Kersaf. The company was acquired by private equity company Inflexion for over 24m in 2003, so the sale represented an embarrassing exit for the owners. It had been thought the Liffey Valley multiplex alone would be worth 20m at the time.