LONDON (Reuters) - Troubled fund firm Crosby Asset Management is in talks to sell or liquidate six Dublin-based funds from its Forsyth range after investors pulled out assets, its chief operating officer told Reuters.

Crosby, whose share price has fallen 85 percent so far this year, is also in talks to sell two Bermuda-based portfolios of mutual funds and hedge funds, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters this week.

"We are in discussions with third parties about all sorts of things...Some parties we were in discussion with we're no longer in discussion with. (But) not all parties have pulled (out)," said chief operating officer (COO) Steve Fletcher.

"At certain levels assets under management become uneconomic," he said.

Mr. Fletcher on Friday declined to comment on the sale of the additional two portfolios.

The talks come less than a year after Crosby bought Forsyth Partners, which went into administration in September and which has since seen assets under management tumble.

The six Dublin-based funds - Forsyth Global Balanced, Global Thematic, Global Bond, Global Emerging Markets, Greater Europe and North America funds - have assets of nearly $230 million according to the latest data on Crosby's website.

However, this figure will in reality be much smaller after a substantial withdrawal by one client of around 30 percent of the Dublin-based funds' assets.

COO Mr. Fletcher also said redemptions "had been larger than that" but refused to give exact figures.

He said both a sale and liquidation were options that could be put to the funds' board.

However, a sale could be more difficult for Crosby as the funds' board has the power to terminate a management contract, which could make buying the funds less attractive.

The two Bermuda-based funds - Indian Opportunities and Global Commodity - have combined assets of around $55 million.

Assets at Forsyth have slumped since Crosby bought it last year, after it went into administration following its loss of its licence to operate in a financial centre in Dubai.

Last September a Forsyth spokesman said Forsyth's funds had around $1.2 billion in assets.

However, at end-June assets had fallen to $603 million and will have fallen further following the major withdrawal by one investor.

"Hindsight is a great thing, and obviously when we purchased Forsyth we didn't anticipate the credit crisis biting as...deeply as it has done. Clearly if we'd known what was going to happen in the market we wouldn't have bought it," said Mr. Fletcher.

He said staff numbers at Forsyth had been cut to 40 from 120.

The outflows come at a difficult time for Crosby, whose Hong Kong-listed parent Crosby Capital has seen its shares fall 60.7 percent this year.

For the first half of 2008 Crosby Capital reported a pretax loss of $47.4 million for the first half of 2008, due in part to the fall in the value of its holding in Jasdaq-listed IB Daiwa and $13.2 million of restructuring costs and charges related to the Forsyth funds.

Its results also show administrative expenses of $26.7 million for the half year and a cash position of $22.9 million.

However, the restructuring of the asset management business would reduce expenses "significantly", Mr. Fletcher said.

He also said the Forsyth Alternative Income fund of hedge funds, which stopped investors taking their money out earlier this year as the credit crisis hit liquidity in its holdings, had been restructured into two share classes - one that allows investors to take out part of their money quicker and another that contains less liquid holdings