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If succesful, a bid would make the U.S. investment bank one of the largest shareholders in the venerable London institution -- one of the few exchanges to still operate an open outcry ring -- with a stake of just under 11 percent.

"There are multiple parties involved," one of the sources told Reuters, requesting anonymity. "It'll be done in the short term I believe," the source said.

A sale of MF Global's 4.7 percent stake could shift the odds in the takeover battle for the LME, the world's biggest metal market, which has thrown its doors open to a potential 1 billion pound ($1.6 billion) takeover.

Goldman Sachs is also a large shareholder in the LME. Two likely contenders for the 1877-founded group are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the IntercontinentalExchange.

Selling the stake would also be boost for creditors of the futures brokerage, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, and for its clients, some of whom have seen their positions frozen ever since.

The whereabouts of about $600 million of customer funds unaccounted for since MF Global went under is still unclear, and it remains an open question whether the group might have improperly mixed these funds with its own.

KPMG has told MF Global's clients they will get back much-needed funds before on an interim basis, saying on Friday it was likely to make first distributions before finally liquidating or transferring all risk positions.

J.P. Morgan, which already holds a 6.2 percent stake in the LME, declined to comment, as did KPMG, the administrator of MF Global's UK arm. The news of the wide interest for the stake was first reported by the Financial Times.

(Reporting by Douwe Miedema)

The comments probably do not signal an imminent widening of the yuan's daily trading band, but they underscore Beijing's intention to introduce two-way fluctuations in the yuan to dampen expectations that China's currency could only appreciate.

Pointing to recent bets in overseas markets that had caused the yuan to hit the bottom end of its trading band a number of times, Wen said such fall in the yuan "could not have been engineered."

"China will continue to closely monitor the yuan's trading movements ... and will strengthen yuan's trading flexibility in either direction," the premier was quoted as saying in an evening news bulletin on state broadcaster CCTV.

Wen also told U.S. President Barack Obama that the trade imbalance between the two countries was a structural issue and that maintaining the healthy development of bilateral trade was essential for both countries and the world, according to the broadcast.

Wen's comments on the yuan were in line with recent central bank moves to encourage the yuan's value to fluctuate more widely within the daily trading band. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) allows the yuan to rise or fall 0.5 percent from its daily mid-point.

Some analysts and traders have argued that the central bank has been laying the groundwork for a widening of the trading band, which would allow China to say in the face of renewed U.S. pressure over the yuan that it is indeed moving ahead with reform to loosen its grip on the currency.

But other analysts believe that China will opt to widen the trading band only when upward pressures on the currency ease in line with a narrower trade surplus and lower capital inflows -- in other words, no time soon.

China's yuan currency -- also known as the renminbi -- has gained about 40 percent in real effective exchange terms since Beijing abandoned its peg to the U.S. dollar in 2005.

Chinese leaders have repeatedly rejected calls from the United States and other rich countries to allow faster yuan appreciation.

Analysts said China appears to have quietly adjusted its currency policy in response to the deepening euro zone debt crisis, slowing the yuan's steady appreciation while trying to nip speculation of yuan depreciation.

The balancing act comes as inflationary pressures come off the boil and economic growth slows in the world's second-largest economy, giving Beijing more room to fine-tune policy.

White House officials said earlier in the day that Obama reiterated currency concerns to Wen during the meeting, which was held on the sidelines of a regional summit in Indonesia.

(Reporting by Fayen Wong; Editing by Don Durfee)