FRANKFURT, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures rose before the start of Wall Street trading on Tuesday, with financial stocks likely to be in focus after news of further write-downs on risky assets at two big European banks.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers believes it is facing a write-down in the $1.3 billion range amid signs its latest quarter will be the rockiest since the mortgage crisis began.
Lehman's Frankfurt-listed shares were down 3.1 percent at 1025 GMT.
The Financial Times reported that banks in the United States have been borrowing nearly $50 billion of one-month funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of assets.
"The financial crisis could be in the spotlight because of fears that banks may have to make more write-downs related to the big U.S. bond insurers," Commerzbank said in a note.
U.S. bond insurers, which guarantee more than $2.4 trillion of debt, have been hit hard by the sub-prime lending crisis.
On Monday, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) , Australia's third-biggest lender, said it may face a $200 million hit on a derivative position with a U.S. monoline insurer which had been downgraded to non-investment grade.
On Tuesday, British bank Barclays raised its 2007 write-down on the value of risky assets to $3.12 billion, and Swiss bank Credit Suisse said it had marked down the value of its asset-backed investments by $2.85 billion.
At 1025 GMT, Dow Jones futures were up 0.6 percent, S&P 500 <.SPc1> futures were up 0.5 percent, and Nasdaq futures traded 0.8 percent higher.
The indicative Dow Jones index <.DJII>, which tracks how the Dow stocks are traded in Frankfurt, was up 0.2 percent.
S&P 500 companies scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Tuesday include Hewlett-Packard , the world's largest personal computer maker, and Wal-Mart Stores , the world's No. 1 retailer.
Hewlett-Packard is expected to report fiscal first-quarter earnings per share (EPS) of $0.81, up from $0.65 in the year-ago period, and Wal-Mart's EPS is seen rising to $1.01 from $0.93, according to Reuters data.
The economic indicators diary has the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) housing market index for February at 1800 GMT. Economists polled by Reuters expect a reading of 19, unchanged from January.
"We'll have no real figures to push the market in one or the other direction, and the newsflow is calm," said Heinz-Gerd Sonnenschein, equity strategist at Postbank in Germany.