(Adds bank comments, background)
* ANZ looking at buying a Japanese bank as part of Asia expansion
* Aozora majority owned by Cerberus; Tokyo Star owned by Lone Star, others
* Aozora shares jump 5.4 pct vs Nikkei's 1 pct rise
SYDNEY, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group , Australia's fourth-largest lender, is looking at buying Japan's Tokyo Star Bank or Aozora Bank , the Australian Financial Review said in its Street Talk Column without citing any sources.
The report comes as U.S. investment firm Lone Star begins preparations to sell unlisted Tokyo Star Bank after it recently regained a stake in the midsize lender, which has total assets of about 2.2 trillion yen ($29 billion).
Aozora Bank is majority-owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and is valued at about $3.9 billion in market capital.
The paper did not specify any deal value.
Officials at Aozora Bank and Tokyo Star declined to comment.
ANZ, which is targeting Asia for growth and expects to get up to 30 percent of profits from the region by 2017, has retained law firm Nagashima Ohno for the deal with the bank's head of strategy and old Japan hand Joyce Phillips driving the deal, the paper said.
An ANZ spokesman declined to comment specifically on the report but said the bank was always looking at options to advance its regional strategy.
ANZ's chief executive, Michael Smith, the architect behind the Asian drive, said at the bank's annual shareholder meeting last year that the regional strategy was not just about Asia but the connectivity between Australia and Asia.
He added that China, Japan, Korea and India made up Australia's five largest trading partners.
Japan is also an attractive target given the excess deposits in the system which could eventually limit ANZ's reliance on offshore debt, the paper said.
Two advisers who have worked with ANZ previously said the bank was looking at Japan for expansion and stake buys but were unaware of any specific deal. They declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media.
Aozora Bank and Tokyo Star are much smaller players compared with Japan's top banks such as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group , which has total assets of about 206 trillion yen.
Tokyo Star was set up by Lone Star a decade ago, taking over the operations of a troubled local bank based in Tokyo.
Aozora Bank was formerly Nippon Credit Bank, which was effectively nationalised during Japan's financial crisis in the late 1990s.
Shares of Aozora rose 5.4 percent to 195 yen, outperforming a 1 percent gain in the benchmark Nikkei average . ($1 = 76.855 Japanese Yen) (Reporting by Narayanan Somasundaram, additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka and Wakako Sato in Tokyo; Editing by Ed Davies and Chris Gallagher)
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