Source: The Age 

The Abbott government has confirmed it will sell its first major public asset - Medibank Private.

Australians will soon be able to buy shares in Medibank Private through an initial public offering, with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann confirming the sale of the multibillion-dollar asset.

Senator Cormann would not be drawn on how much money he hoped the government would make from the sale, which has been speculated as netting about $4 billion.

''Subject to market conditions, Medibank Private will be sold through an initial public offering in the 2014-15 financial year,'' Senator Cormann said on Wednesday.

Medibank returned a profit to government of $315 million in 2013.

Senator Cormann told reporters in Canberra that an independently prepared scoping study found ''no compelling reason for the government to own Medibank Private''.

''The scoping study found no evidence that premiums would increase as a result of the sale of Medibank Private,'' he said.

The Finance Minister would not comment on what other public assets the Abbott government planned to sell to reduce hundreds of billions of dollars of mounting debt.

Senator Cormann claimed the sale of Medibank Private would remove the ''inherent conflict'' where the government was both the health insurance market regulator and the owner of a large participant in the market.

Medibank Private currently competes against 34 other funds in the private health insurance market.

To prepare for the sale of Medibank Private the Abbott government will appoint three new board members.

David Fagan, Linda Nicholls and Christine O'Reilly will begin as members of the Medibank board on March 31.

Mr Fagan is a  lawyer with Clayton Utz. Ms Nicholls is a corporate adviser and a director of a number of organisations including KDR (Yarra Trams), Sigma Pharmaceutical Group, and Fairfax Media (owner of this website).

Ms O'Reilly is currently a director of CSL, Transurban, Energy Australia and Baker IDI and a deputy chair of Care Australia.

In February, Fairfax Media learnt that a team of corporate spin doctors had begun drawing up plans to sell the idea for a full or partial-privatisation to the public.

The company, Newgate Communications, whose 10 senior executives include four former Liberal government staffers, is being paid $2000 a day to devise a communications strategy.

The contract, worth $211,000 over five months, runs until June 30.

It was awarded by the Department of Finance on January 29, a month before Mr Cormann received the results of the scoping study that was supposed to be the trigger for a sale.

With Heath Aston