Lehman Europe plans creditor payout in November
The European arm of Lehman Brothers is to return cash to unsecured investors at the end of November, its first since the investment bank fell four years ago.
Administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers is yet to announce the size of the payment.
So far, it has agreed around £3.9bn worth of claims with unsecured creditors. These investors typically rank at the bottom of the creditor hierachy.
“There have been huge obstacles preventing us from making a first distribution from the general estate to unsecured creditors,” said Tony Lomas, the lead administrator of Lehman Europe at PwC.
Clients with funds that were kept in separate accounts and were easier to process are the only ones to have got some money back from the European business since Lehman’s collapse in the biggest bankruptcy in US history.
PricewaterhouseCoopers unveiled a payout plan for Lehman investors in 2010. Since then over £13.5bn in cash and securities has been returned to clients with money in separate accounts, out of the broker’s $32bn in client assets it held at the time of collapse.