Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may shift about $32 billion of commercial mortgages and real estate to a new company that will be spun off in a move similar to the good-bank-bad-bank model used in the 1980s banking crisis, two people briefed on the discussions said.

The bad bank, nicknamed Spinco for now, would have about $8 billion of equity coming from Lehman, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the plan is one of several under consideration. Spinco would borrow the remaining $24 billion from Lehman or outside investors. The New York-based bank would replace capital put into Spinco, whose shares would be owned by current Lehman shareholders.

The chief executive officer of Lehman, Richard Fuld, 62, is under pressure to strip the firm’s balance sheet of hard-to-sell assets. To raise cash needed to cope with losses from a wholesale disposal, Lehman has been talking with Korea Development Bank about a capital infusion and with private equity firms interested in buying its asset-management unit.

“The model helps banks get on with their real business, focus on their strengths, after they put the bad assets aside,” an attorney at Reed Smith LLP who was the senior counsel to Bank Mellon during its spinoff of bad assets in 1988, Michael Bleier, said. “We’ll see it being used again during this crisis.”

A spokesman for Lehman, Mark Lane, declined to comment.