It means investors can buy a share in London's most famous office block, the 50-storey block visible from many parts of London.
This will raise about £650m, money which will help pay off group debts and meet Canary Wharf's commitments to help fund the Jubilee Line extension.
The group's chief executive, George Iacobescu, said the company still had to pay between £70m and £90m towards the underground rail link as part of its agreement with the government.
In total, it should have a market capitalisation of up to £2.6bn.
It would create the second-largest listed UK property company with gross assets valued at about £3.8bn.
The property developer, Canary Wharf, is currently owned by a consortium led by Paul Reichmann and includes Saudi Prince al-Walid Ibn Talal, a unit of Loews, Franklin Mutual Series Fund and affiliates of Republic New York.
The consortium bought the 85-acre development from a group of banks in December 1995 for a sum rumoured to be around £800m.
Wharf goes bust
The banks had seized the estate after Reichmann's Olympia & York Developments, the original developer of Canary Wharf, went into administration in May 1992.
The company said 75% of the shares will be held by the consortium which currently owns Canary Wharf, while 25% will be available to public investors.
Canary Wharf is a 13.5 million square feet office complex in east London, of which only 4.7 million square feet has been developed so far.
The money will be used to finance the planned development of another 3.6 million square feet under construction or about to begin construction and a further possible 5.3 million square feet of office and retail space over the next five to seven years.
The company plans to float around 25% of the group on the market. A prospectus for potential investors will be published in ten days time with a flotation set to go ahead before Easter.
Eleven buildings are complete and another seven are under construction including a 42-storey site set to become the headquarters of HSBC.
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