Creditors Could Get Paid in Full After Lehman Brothers Collapse

When the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the global financial system collapsed with it, to a degree, and the rifts and fissions of its bankruptcy affected the world market. Now, thanks to the development of a lot of litigation, it seems that the 35 billion pounds ($53.8 billion) owed to thousands of creditors, including 14.2 billion pounds owed to unsecured creditors, may in fact be fully paid back, and that there could even be a surplus to deal with. Things are going better than expected. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is handling the wind down, and has so far earned 600 million pounds in fees.

Tony Lomas, 56, who is working as a lead administrator partner for PwC plans to work on this case into his retirement — indeed beyond it. “It will keep me occupied one way or the other until I retire but it will carry on beyond my retirement, that is for sure.”

He also told Reuters that “the developments we have had over the last six months have been pretty significant,” and that some of the major settlements he’s been seeing “were significant enough that they tip the balance.” That means, ultimately, that creditors are getting all their money back, even the unsecured creditors, who usually are the least likely to get their money.

“It could be three, four, five years down the track or even more,” he warned. “It depends if we have ongoing litigation.”