June 17 (Bloomberg) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the investment bank liquidating in bankruptcy, will sell the management contract for its real-estate funds to a group of executives who used to run the business, a spokeswoman for Lehman said.

The group will pay Lehman about $10 million for rights to the contract, said a person familiar with the matter. Lehman has raised $9.3 billion of cash so far for creditors, according to a June 15 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Lehman, which invested more than $1 billion out of $5.6 billion of equity in the three real-estate funds since 2000, will retain as much as a 20 percent stake to benefit creditors, the spokeswoman said in a phone interview today. Mark Walsh, one of a team of five real-estate specialists who worked together at Lehman, is among the buyers.

Through asset sales, the funds already have returned $3.6 billion to Lehman and its partners, the person said.

The Wall Street Journal reported the sale earlier today.

Lehman Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal has said creditors would benefit more by waiting until real-estate values recover, rather than selling properties at fire-sale prices.

The funds have held stakes in Tishman Hotel Co. of the U.S., 60 U.K. Intercontinental hotels and Singapore condominiums, as well as in Indian and Swedish real-estate companies.

Biggest Bankruptcy

Lehman filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September with assets of $639 billion. It has as much as $250 billion in liabilities left to pay, Marsal said.

Separately, three New York investment funds, Elliott Capital Management Corp., King Street Capital Management LP and Paulson & Co., have acquired about $12.5 billion in claims against Lehman, their law firm White & Case LLP said in a court filing today.

Also banding together “to efficiently protect their rights” as Lehman creditors are the affiliates and customers of Berlin finance group Deutscher Sparkassen-und Giroverband, which includes 477 savings banks and 13 insurance companies, White & Case said.

At a hearing today in New York, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck approved Lehman’s request for a cross-border protocol to improve cooperation among the various trustees and liquidators of the firm’s assets worldwide.

“There is a path to be followed,” Lehman lawyer Richard Krasnow told Peck of the protocol. “A way to cut our way through the morass.”

Lehman is planning a meeting in London among the various liquidators next month to address the amounts of intercompany claims and loans as well as data-sharing issues, Krasnow said. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrator for Lehman Brothers International Europe in the U.K., hasn’t agreed to participate as of now, Krasnow said.

The Lehman case is In re Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., 08- 13555, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net; Christopher Scinta in New York bankruptcy court at csinta@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 17, 2009 15:22 EDT