LOS ANGELES (Bloomberg) — Las Vegas Sands Corp. is selling as much as $600 million in bonds that automatically convert into shares of its Macau business when the unit is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The bond sale will help the firm attain "long-term financial stability", chairman and chief executive officer Adelson said yesterday in a statement. The sale is expected to be completed "in a matter of days", the company said, and the conversion into shares will be mandatory when the stock is sold.

Lenders eased restrictions on Las Vegas Sands' $3.3 billion Macau credit line last month, including permitting share and bond sales in Asia in exchange for higher interest rates. The company said on August 20 the Macau unit applied to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the IPO, without giving a date for the sale.

The moves "have clearly helped to strengthen our balance sheet", Las Vegas Sands President Michael Leven said in yesterday's statement. The company also plans to sell malls and condominiums it has developed in Asia "when economic and capital market conditions are appropriate", to help pay down debt, the statement said.

Las Vegas Sands needs cash from the Hong Kong IPO to restart work on mothballed lots at its $12 billion, 20,000-room hotel and casino complex on the Cotai Strip in Macau, the only part of China where casinos are legal. Construction stopped last year when revenue growth slowed and credit markets froze.

Las Vegas Sands, based in Las Vegas, rose 39 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $13.84 at 11:04 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have more than doubled this year.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is managing the notes offering, according to Bloomberg data.