State-owned Indian Oil Corp has hired six banks, including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and ICICI Securities, to handle its FPO planned for early next year. The six book running lead managers were hired from a set of 18 banks which made presentations over the past three days, sources said. Other banks hired were Morgan Stanley, SBI Capital and UBS. The government has approved fresh equity issue of 10 per cent of existing paid-up capital by IOC. Along with this, the government also intends to disinvest 10 per cent of the pre- issue equity capital through FPO, which is planned for the first quarter of 2011 calendar year.