VIENNA (Reuters) ? Troubled Austrian bank BAWAG P.S.K., its owner, and US lawyers and prosecutors are in the process of signing a deal to settle lawsuits of at least $1.3 billion against BAWAG, the bank?s owner said on Friday.

BAWAG?s owner, trade union federation OeGB, will give information about the settlement reached with creditors and shareholders of bankrupt US broker Refco Inc at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the OeGB said.

?The process of collecting the signatures under the agreement has started,? the spokeswoman said. She declined to provide any details of the settlement.

BAWAG said on May 1 it had reached the deal but has been hammering out the details since.

Refco creditors and shareholders in April sued BAWAG, which had been a Refco shareholder until 2004, saying the bank had been a ?willing co-conspirator? in the accounting fraud that helped bring down the futures trader last October.

The bank said it considered the suit unfounded but would try to settle to gain legal certainty. BAWAG itself sued Refco last year, saying it was duped into giving the broker a 350 million euro ($448 million) loan days before it collapsed.

News of the US lawsuit triggered a run on BAWAG at the end of April, when withdrawals by worried clients reached as much as 100 million euros a day.

The situation calmed after a government-brokered 1.35 billion euro bailout to underpin the settlement was announced.

BAWAG needs the settlement to go ahead with its planned sale. The OeGB last month hired Morgan Stanley to find buyers for the bank, which is Austria?s fourth largest and mainly focused on the domestic retail market.

Sources close to the bank said last month BAWAG would pay $675 million to settle the lawsuit and would withdraw its own lawsuit. OeGB president Hundstorfer has said the OeGB would also share what it yields in the BAWAG sale with the US plaintiffs.