**The three big banks cobbling together a $75 billion fund to help struggling structured investment vehicles (SIVs) will begin asking their industry cohorts to help, according to The Wall Street Journal.

SIVs have been hurt as the value of their assets — mainly bank debt and asset-backed securities — dropped amid the U.S. mortgage crisis and the evaporation of short-term funding. The super fund will create potential buyers for SIV assets.

BlackRock Inc. has been asked to be the lead asset manager for the $75 billion to $100 billion fund. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. have created a structure for the fund, but it isn’t clear how other financial institutions will respond, the WSJ said.

**Struggling British bank Northern Rock denied a newspaper report on Friday of a “massive hole” in its assets and said it had more than enough assets to cover its borrowings from the Bank of England.

The Guardian newspaper said earlier that about 53 billion pounds ($110 billion) of Northern Rock’s mortgages were owned by a separate Jersey-based company called Granite and that this called into question government claims that taxpayers’ money was safe.

Northern Rock was forced to go to the Bank of England for emergency loans two months ago, as the global squeeze on credit demolished its funding strategy, prompting the first run on a British bank for over 140 years.

“Northern Rock’s Granite programme is well defined and very similar to other UK issuers of securitisation. The market is very familiar with Northern Rock’s Granite programme — monthly investment reports are published,” a Northern Rock spokesman said.

**British Airways and private equity firm TPG will decide over the weekend whether to proceed with their 3.4 billion euro ($5.07 billion) bid for Iberia, a source familiar with the talks told Reuters.

BA must decide whether to invest in further stakes in Iberia or let lender Caja Madrid buy the shares, likely complicating its bid to buy Spain’s biggest airline.