Lehman Brothers (LEH) with its back to the wall says that it will spin off about $32 billion of commercial real estate mortgage holdings to shareholders early next year.

As reported in the New York Times, apparently Lehman can’t find anyone to sell these mortgages to, so they are going to separate them off from the rest of Lehman and give them to shareholders in the form of a new public company.

No one knows how this is going to happen right now and while there is a lot of questioning of which mortgages will be in the new company and which they will keep with the parent, we won’t know until they file the details with the SEC.

It is going to be very interesting to see what they put in there and to watch what the unwilling recipients do with the stock. Having watched their stock lose nearly 50% of its value in one day this week, I can’t imagine that many shareholders are particularly enthusiastic about the prospects of this or any other move by Lehman being good for them, but time will tell.

So far it sounds like a classic spin-off scenario and don’t be too surprised if it comes out in a form that is hard to read through and even harder to figure out. Our goal will be, as always, to try to figure out what’s in it for the insiders.

Here’s the complete New York Times article on the Lehman Brothers spin-off plans as they are known now.

Tags: leh, lehman brothers, real estate spin-off