Monte Paschi board seen meeting Monday on plan to shed bad loans - source

ROME (Reuters) - The board of Monte dei Paschi di Siena is expected to meet on Monday to approve a plan to reduce its burden of bad loans, a source familiar with the matter said, without giving further details.

Daily Il Messaggero reported that under the plan the Tuscan lender would offload 8.9-9.0 billion euros ($10.10 billion) in gross impaired loans at net value of 4.2-4.3 billion euros.

The paper said the bank would de-merge the impaired loans together with 1-1.1 billion euros in equity and 3.2 billion in debt from a five-year loan granted by JPMorgan and UBS.

Italy's Treasury, which owns 68% of Monte Paschi, has been seeking to help it reduce impaired loans to around 5% of total lending to make it a more an attractive merger partner, without imposing excessive losses on the fragile bank.

(Reporting by Valentina Za, writing by Gavin Jones)