Aug 12 (Reuters) - hNomad Foods Ltd is close to acquiring the continental European business operations of frozen food maker Findus Group Ltd in a deal valued at just over 500 million pounds ($780.6 million), the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Nomad is expected to pay 400 million pounds in cash and offer 8.4 million shares for these operations to Findus' private equity owners including Lion Capital and Highbridge Capital, the newspaper said. (http://on.ft.com/1MoK04M)

The deal, which could be announced on Thursday, does not include the UK operations of Findus, which was involved in the horsemeat scandal in 2013, FT reported.

Representatives at Nomad, Findus, Lion Capital and Highbridge Capital were immediately not available for comment.

In June, Nomad announced that it was in exclusive early talks with Findus.

Findus is one of Europe's biggest frozen food and seafood companies with over 1 billion pounds in annual turnover and 6,000 employees. Under the Findus label it sells frozen food in countries including the Nordics, Spain and France.

Nomad is an acquisition company set up in 2014 by deal-making veterans Martin Franklin and Noam Gottesman. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by U.S. billionaire William Ackman, owns 22 percent of Nomad.

Findus is headquartered in the UK, where it runs the Young's Seafood business which sells branded products and also supplies major UK grocers with private label seafood.

($1 = 0.6419 pounds)

(Reporting by Shivam Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)