Japan Airlines Co plans to relist its shares as early as September in a public offering that could raise up to 1 trillion yen ($13 billion), Bloomberg news reported on Thursday, marking the carrier's recovery from bankruptcy and restructuring.

A Japan Airlines spokesman declined to comment, although the company had said it would consider returning to the stock market when a government-backed turnaround body sells its $4.3 billion stake by the end of this year.

Nomura Holdings Inc <8604.T> and Daiwa Securities Group Inc <8601.T> were in August selected by the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp as global coordinators on the planned sale of its stake in the carrier, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2010 after collapsing under repeated losses and mounting debt.

Global lead advisers for sales of shares overseas are due to be selected by mid-January, a Japan Airlines spokesman said.

The carrier emerged from bankruptcy last March after slashing 16,000 jobs, cutting pension benefits and paring its international and domestic flight networks, and logged a record consolidated operating profit of 188.4 billion yen for the 2010 financial year.

The relisting is set to be one of the biggest offerings of the year in Japan and a major source of business for the underwriters.

The Nikkei business daily has reported that the carrier was likely to repay last month 185 billion yen in loans due in January 2013, to pay down debt as its finances improved and it prepared for a relisting in autumn 2012.

($1 = 76.7400 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo and Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Joseph Radford)

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