Lehman clients must wait a while longer…

Clients of Lehman Brothers’ European operations face further delay in recovering their assets after an English judge decided he could not approve a scheme that would help expedite the winding up of the collapsed bank’s complicated operation.

PwC, administrator of the defunct bank’s main European operations, had proposed a scheme of arrangement to divide more than 1,000 clients into three classes and allow the administrators to deal with claims by class rather than individually.

However, Mr Justice Blackburne decided that the English courts did not have the jurisdiction to modify the bank’s clients’ claims, a step which was required to sanction the scheme.