Lehman administrators' task will dwarf Enron, creditors told

• European arm has more than $500bn of debt
• Collapsed bank's creditors expect less than 10%

Simon Bowers
guardian.co.uk
Saturday November 15 2008

Administrators grappling with the European arm of the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers have told creditors their task is "10 times as big and as complicated" as the unwinding of Enron.

Speaking after the first creditors' meeting, a team from PricewaterhouseCoopers said they had identified more than $1tn (£670bn) in assets and liabilities that need to be accounted for.

At the meeting, held behind closed doors in a conference hall at the O2 dome in London, the lead administrator, Tony Lomas, told hundreds of representatives and lawyers that he had recovered about $5bn out of a potential $550bn of obligations owing to creditors. A further $22.3bn of client assets had been identified, all of which will be returned to their owners.