Lehman Brothers and Dresdner Kleinwort have been invited to join a banking consortium hoping to buy a stake in Pirelli's tyre unit which could raise up to €666m ($844m) for the Italian conglomerate.

The banking group were set to underwrite the failed initial public offering of the tyre business late last month. They are now reported to be lining up a bid for 35% of the company before the end of this month, according to Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.