The administrator¹ of Lehman Brother's European operations has warned winding² them up "may take a decade".

雷曼兄弟欧洲分部管理人说到，处理善后事物“可能需要耗费十年时间”。

Mr Lomas is the leading administrator at Lehman Brothers Europe

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) partner Tony Lomas has been leading the attempts to sort out Lehman's European network of trades and investments.

"This has been the most complex insolvency³（破产） case I have ever dealt with and am ever likely to," Mr Lomas said.

So far the team has recovered £5.5bn, but Mr Lomas added that there are "many billions" still left to recover.

Complex process

"I think we will break the back of the case in the next 30 to 36 months, but the rest of the case will continue for many years after that," he said.

Mr Lomas has worked on some the UK's biggest administration cases, including MG Rover and BCCI bank, but said the Lehman case was his biggest task yet.

PwC has 200 of its own staff working on the case along with 400 former Lehman employees working on the administration.

PwC hopes that eventually it will be able to return money to the many Lehman creditors⁴ around the world.

'Massive claim'

The administration team is also preparing to file a claim of around $140bn (£84bn) against Lehman's parent company in New York.

The total includes the $8bn that was "swept back" to New York two days before Lehman Brothers went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy⁵.

Cash from the European operation was regularly transferred between London and New York, but many felt that Lehman's London employees had lost out due to the convention.

Despite the massive claim, Lomas says he does not expect to get much of the $140bn after it has been through the US courts.

The job of winding up Lehman is costly⁶, with PwC already earning £100m from the work it has done over the past 12 months.

The cost has increased because the administrators⁷ have kept on many of the highest earners at Lehman Brothers in an attempt to help unscramble（整理） the company's affairs.