Lehman Brothers’ European clients and creditors may have to wait another two years before they get back billions of dollars of assets tied up in the bank when it collapsed a year ago.

Tony Lomas, partner at PwC and administrator for the bank’s European operations, said he had hoped to have “broken the back” of the case by this time next year, substantially reconciling claims and returning assets to clients and putting in place a process for paying dividends to unsecured creditors.