UPDATE 1-INTERVIEW-Finmeccanica cuts average debt expiry-CFO

* Around 1 bln euros of loan left to finance

* Orders for bond topped $2.5 billion

(Adds quotes, more details)

By Gabriella Bruschi

MILAN, July 9 (Reuters) - Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica (SIFI.MI) will extend the average expiry of its debt to 7.8 years from 6.5 years with its dollar bond issue this week, Chief Financial Officer Alessandro Pansa told Reuters on Thursday.

In April Pansa told the annual shareholders' meeting that the company's debt had an average expiry of 6.5 years and that it planned to extend that to eight years within two years.

He added that the dollar issue, which was in a 10-year and a 30-year tranche, left around 1 billion euros ($1.39 billion) still to finance from a 3.2 billion euro loan used to buy U.S. group DRS Technologies in a deal announced in May 2008.

"Mid-2010 there is a tranche for 750 million (euros) of the original loan and mid-2011 there is a second tranche of 800 million (euros)," Pansa said.

"Against that, at the end of the month we should close a loan from European Investment Bank amortising 500 million

(euros)," he added.

Wednesday's bond issue was for a total of $800 million in two tranches. Orders topped $2.5 billion. [nMAT009744]

The bond, which had been planned since the DRS acquisition, comes as a slew of European companies are taking advantage of favourable market conditions to issue debt.

Finmeccanica has said it will also look at asset sales to reduce its debt, which totalled 3.3 billion euros at the end of December.

($1=.7184 euros)

(Reporting by Gabriella Bruschi; Writing by Jo Winterbottom; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

((jo.winterbottom@thomsonreuters.com; +39 02 66129 442; Reuters messaging: jo.winterbottom.reuters.com@reuters.net))

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