UPDATE 1-Eurotunnel launches $1.43 billion rights issue

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PARIS, April 29 (Reuters) - Eurotunnel (GETP.PA), the company which runs the subsea link between Britain and France, said on Tuesday it was launching a 915.4 million euro ($1.43 billion) rights issue as part of its finance restructuring.

Groupe Eurotunnel said the subscription period for the rights issue was April 30 to May 29.

The subscription price is 8.75 euros per share, representing a discount of 28 percent to the company's share price on April 25, the last day before Eurotunnel's shares were suspended.

"This rights issue will enable Groupe Eurotunnel to control its future as a long-term infrastructure concessionaire with good prospects in terms of profitability and recurrent cash flow," Eurotunnel Chairman Jacques Gounon said in a statement.

The rights issue had been expected as part of a two-stage process by the company which saved itself from bankruptcy last year after agreeing to restructure its crippling debt burden.

The original Eurotunnel company was founded in 1986 but soon found itself in difficulty due to the soaring costs of digging the tunnel linking Britain and France.

The company found after the Channel Tunnel's official opening in May 1994 that it might not make enough cash from tunnel users such as freight operators and Eurostar trains to service its debt payments.

Last year it approved a debt restructuring deal which formed a new company and gave banks and financial institutions a major part of its increased share capital.

Eurotunnel had already completed an 800 million euro issue of subordinated debt and had been planning a second capital increase worth around 900 million euros in share warrants.

The rights issue is fully underwritten by a banking syndicate composed of ABN AMRO, HSBC, Lazard-Natixis, Lehman Brothers and UBS.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Richard Hubbard and Erica Billingham)