Bank of America (BoA) will soon complete it’s plan to sell a major portion of it’s stake in China Construction Bank (CCB), one of China’s big four lenders, in a deal valued at around RMB65 billion (US$10 billion), according to sources close to the deal.

Bank of America may sell around half of it’s present CCB stake of nearly 10 percent to a consortium of Asian and Middle eastern sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms as early as next week, though the buyers have not yet been announced. The sale is part of a bid by the struggling bank to remain solvent under international regulations; BoA has recently seen a major fall-off in share price attributed to losses on mortgage securities, fear of a double-dip recession and worries that the bank’s management may begin selling more shares to raise funds in reaction.

While megainvestor Warren Buffett has stepped in with a US$5 billion investment in the struggling giant, which temporarily tempered the stock price, analysts say it may not be enough to pull BoA out of it’s current downward spiral.

The bank invested in CCB in 2005, and has seen the value of it’s original investment nearly double in that time period. In BoA’s most recent filing, it estimated the value of it’s stake to be around RMB125 billion (US$19.6 billion). The company holds a total of 25.6 billion shares in CCB, 23.6 billion of which have been held in a six-year sales lockup which expires next week.