Carnival offers up to 25 mln London-listed shares

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Carnival Corp & Plc (CCL.N) (CCL.L) is offering up to 25 million newly issued common shares of its stock listed on the London Stock Exchange, the world's largest cruise ship operator said in a securities filing on Thursday.

Carnival said it intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to buy common stock of Carnival Corp, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and for general corporate purposes, the Miami-based company said in a prospectus.

Carnival's shares have been dually listed since April 2003. Carnival Corp and Carnival Plc have their own shareholders, but operate under the same management team.

The stock sale will be engineered by the company's wholly-owned subsidiary Carnival Investments Ltd and Merrill Lynch International. Carnival Investments may sell the shares "at any time and from time to time, in one or more offerings," according to the prospectus.

Shares of London-listed Carnival Plc fell 2.6 percent, while shares listed in New York, Carnival Corp, dropped more than 3 percent in early trading.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)