Citing Chief Executive Officer Mario Barozzi, the paper said the two funds could be in place by 2015. They would pool bad loans, excluding the most problematic ones, from a number of banks that could then be restructured using new funding.

"The new funding would come from third-party investors that would subscribe to a stake in the new funds managed by Idea," Barozzi was quoted as saying.

Idea Capital Funds could not immediately be reached for comment.

One fund would focus on loans in the industrial sector and its total size will be of between 500 million euros (407.1 million pounds) to 1 billion euros. The other will be dedicated to loans in the agricultural sector, with the fund's total size at around 300 million euros.

The project follows a move by Italy's top two banks UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, which in April said they had signed a deal with U.S. private equity firm KKR to pool some of their problematic loans, as the country's lenders seek new ways to grapple with soured debts.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Alison Williams)

Stocks treated in this article : Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, KKR & Co. L.P., UniCredit SpA