The days are dwindling in Lehman Brothers' third quarter—another backbreaking quarter by all accounts—and the firm is considering several options to try to ease the pain.

Relief could come in the sale of a stake in its asset-management business, Neuberger Berman. The business has been valued roughly at $10 billion—about the entire market value of Lehman itself—and a gain of several billion dollars from a sale of a significant stake could go a long way toward shoring up the Wall Street firm's balance sheet.

Yet the virtually public disclosure that Neuberger Berman is on the block (Lehman is not commenting, but reports appear today in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, and elsewhere after weeks of speculation and weeks of reports by Charles Gasparino on CNBC) also suggests that Lehman is getting desperate. This view, says Peter Eavis of the Wall Street Journal, is that the third quarter "has turned ugly and the bank is racing to get deals done before the period ends."

Eavis also notes that a sale may be driven as much by Neuberger Berman as by Lehman: "Top-level Neuberger employees—having seen much of their wealth wiped out by Lehman's plunging share price and fed up with their healthy firm being overshadowed by a sick parent—may want an outside firm to take a large stake."

A successful sale of a big stake would be a big boost to Dick Fuld, the chief executive of Lehman who has faced calls for asset sales since the firm reported a loss of $2.8 billion for the second quarter, its first as a public company. Fuld has raised $12 billion of new capital and shaken up the management ranks, and has reportedly tried to persuade big Asian investors to take a stake in the firm. Today, an analyst with J.P. Morgan Chase estimates that Lehman will take $4 billion in write-downs in the third quarter.

The New York Times reports that Lehman has sent letters to a number of private equity firms and other financial institutions to test their interest in Neuberger Berman. "The letter, a so-called memorandum of understanding, did not put a value on the division," the Times said. "It said that interested parties could bid for all or some of the pieces but encouraged bidders to make an offer for the whole business."

Yves Smith on the Naked Capitalism blog says the description of the letter is curious.

"This gives the impression that Lehman is price-shopping to get inputs as to whether it should sell all or part of the operations or not," she writes. "The reason I doubt this interpretation is you don't circulate 'detailed' information to buyers casually."

Another curiosity, she says, is that no Japanese banks, flush with cash (as seen by Monday's deal for UnBanCal), are listed as prospective buyers in any of the reports.

Neuberger was acquired by Lehman in 2003 for $2.6 billion. Since then, the business has more than doubled; it accounts for the bulk of Lehman's $277 billion of assets under management.