After having walked away from buying out of the entire Lehman Brothers over the weekend, the UK's third largest bank, Barclays Plc, yesterday said it was in negotiaions to acquire "certain assets" of the US firm.

Acording to reports, Barclays is interested in buying out Lehman's core broker-dealer business in the US that could lead to the transfer of 10,000 Lehman staff to Barclays, which is keen to take over market share from US firms weakened by the credit crunch, to get into the top league of US securities firms.

In a statement in response to media reports, the UK bank said, "Barclays confirms that it is discussing with Lehman Brothers for the possible acquisition of certain Lehman Brothers' assets on terms that would be attractive to Barclays shareholders."

It qualified its intention by adding, "There can be no assurance that the discussions will result in an agreement."

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people involved in the talks, that Archibald Cox Jr, chairman, Barclays Americas, was leading the negotiations and an agreement was expected today.

The report also said that the remaining portions of Lehman like mortgage securities, would be left for creditors to liquidate.

Over the wekend both Barclays and Bank of America Corp had abandoned their respctive plans for acquiring Lehman.

Barclays declined to bid for all of Lehman after three days of negotiations involving the US Treasury and Federal Reserve, as it could not obtain guarantees from the US government to reduce Lehman's open-ended' trading obligations, leading to the battered US firm filing for the biggest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in history that  listed $639 billion in assets and $613 billion in debt on Monday - a step that plunged the global financial markets into turmoil. (See: Lehman Brothers heads for Chapter 11 as Barclays walks away). 

By only buying out a portion of the bankrupt US firm, Barclays is keen to only acquire Lehman's key assets without assuming its liabilities.

Lehman is also reported to be holding talks with several private-equity firms including Bain Capital LLC, Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc and Hellman & Friedman LLC, for the sale of its investment-management business and plans to proceed with an auction that it had announced last week.