* Says dividend for 2010 to remain unchanged at 1.50 eur/shr
* 2011 div to be not below 1.30 eur/shr, 2012 div to be flat
* E.ON to expand into two new markets
* To grow in power production, energy trading outside Europe
* Shares rise 4 percent vs index up 1 percent
(Adds analyst comment, shares, background)
By Peter Dinkloh and Tom Kaeckenhoff
DUESSELDORF, Germany, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Germany's E.ON, the world's largest utility, reassured investors by promising minimum dividends for two years, offering confidence in an industry unsettled by slumping prices and demand.
The triple whammy of lower industrial production, declining power and gas prices as well as prospects of higher taxes in markets such as Germany has made the utility sector the worst-performing in Europe for the second year in a row.
E.ON is seeking to counteract that trend and said on Wednesday its dividend for 2011 would drop no more than 13 percent to 1.30 euros ($1.79) a share, and its 2012 payout would remain at that level.
"As prospects for E.ON's operating business are weak the dividend was the last hope" for investors, said Equinet analyst Michael Schäfer.
E.ON shares rose 4.15 percent to 23.10 euros at 1139 GMT, outperforming the STOXX Europe 600 utilities index, which was up 1.2 percent.
The company also plans to give more weight to markets outside Europe, a strategy that has helped competitors such as GDF Suez and Enel, and to expand into two new regions.
While E.ON has not yet decided which markets to target, a person with knowledge of the matter had told Reuters on Tuesday that south-eastern Asia was one of the regions E.ON was considering entering.
"We are analysing which markets we'll target and will decide that soon," said a spokesman on Wednesday, declining to be more specific.
The company's record outside Europe has been mixed: It sold PG & E, a utility it owned in the United States, for $6.7 billion while keeping its windmills in the country. In Russia, it spent more than 4 billion euros to buy power producer OGK-4.
E.ON also plans to sell 15 billion euros in assets by 2013.
That strategy "isn't going to prove easy," Kepler's Becker said. "The execution risk in both disposals and acquisitions is high." ($1=.7256 Euro) (Editing by Jon Loades-Carter and Hans Peters)