Last checked at 
By Massimo Gaia
MILAN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Barclays is in talks tosell Italian performing mortgages worth 4 billion euros ($4.46billion), two sources with knowledge of the matter said, as theBritish bank presses ahead with the sale of European assets.
Potential bidders have a Thursday deadline to submit bindingoffers, they said, adding that the deal is part of a plan tosell a wider portfolio of Italian mortgages.
U.S. money manager Christofferson, Robb & Company, a duocomprising U.S. hedge fund Elliot Management and Italian creditfirm Fonspa, and a bidding group made up of private equity firmOaktree and Italian bank Creval are in the race, oneof the sources said.
A spokeswoman for Barclays in Italy and the potentialbidders declined to comment.
Barclays said last year it planned to sell its continentalEuropean retail banking operations and had put them in anon-core unit with other assets it intended to sell or run down.
The bank has sold its retail banking operations in Spain andPortugal - but kept some activities, such as investment bankingand credit cards - and is still looking to sell assets in Italyand France.
Barclays said it had 11.9 billion pounds ($18.27 billion) ofresidential mortgage exposure in Italy at the end of June, downfrom 13.5 billion pounds at the start of the year.($1 = 0.6513 pounds) (Additional reporting by Luca Trogni in Milan and Steven Slaterin London, writing by Danilo Masoni)
