PwC has confirmed that it will begin to release funds to some of Lehman's unsecured creditors next month.

The move follows the announcement of an agreement in principle on 5 October that the squabbling between Lehman Brother International (Europe) (or LBIE) and Lehman Brothers Inc (LBI) over $38bn (£23.6bn) of claims had been settled.

Tony Lomas, lead administrator at PwC, said: 'While we have already successfully returned more than £13.5bn of securities and cash to LBIE clients from segregated accounts over the past four years, there have been huge obstacles preventing us from making a first distribution from the general estate to unsecured creditors.

'Through the combined efforts of the remaining 500 Lehman employees and a team of PwC specialists, we have reached a point where we can begin to return the general estate funds to unsecured creditors.

'While there remains a vast amount of work still to be done collecting in Lehman's assets, agreeing complex creditor claims and recovering segregated securities and cash for clients, this next step represents a major milestone in the winding down of Lehman's affairs in the UK.

'We expect the next significant milestone to be the payment of a first distribution from the separate client money pool in the first half of 2013, followed by the recovery of circa $8bn of segregated securities and cash from LBI, for repatriation to clients.'

The administrators will announce the exact size of the distribution in due course.