NEW YORK -- Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross is looking to raise $4 billion to buy troubled banks and is hoping investors in the Middle East will join him, according to a report on Fox Business News.

Via telephone, Ross told the news station he believes the current mortgage crisis will be bigger than the 1980s savings and loan crisis for small and regional depositary institutions.

"They're all quite overexposed in real estate," Ross said.

"What we're mostly interested in are banks that have a very stable source of relatively low-cost deposits," he added.

Ross, who is traveling to Abu Dhabi next week to speak at an Asian venture capital conference, said he would be approaching investors in the region to join him in the plan.

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