Tony Lomas, lead PwC administrator and partner said: ‘The full repayment represents a remarkable feat, following the collapse of the Lehman group in September 2008. The fact that we have been able to pay ordinary unsecured creditors in full, including the return of their Trust Assets and Client Money, with a significant surplus remaining, highlights the importance of having a healthy level of capital within a firm's balance sheet.’

In addition to the £10bn to be paid out to unsecured creditors next month, PwC estimates that creditors could actually receive interest on their money and has discovered a surplus of about £5bn that could be used to pay further dividends. However, the  administrators will first need to resolve ongoing legal argument over which of some 5,000 counterparties should be paid first and are due to produce a ‘consensual solution proposal’ detailing the order of payments.

Lehman Brothers was the biggest bankruptcy in US history and Lomas said the experience of handling the LBIE administration had provided ‘an interesting example’ to regulators and central banks currently developing 'bail in' plans to address the 'too big to fail' problem.

‘Whilst “bail in” is intended to address pending balance sheet insolvency, PwC's experience dealing with LBIE clearly demonstrates the very sizeable potential need to support a firm's liquidity at the same time, where it has high volume, high value and complex trades pending at the point of its immediate failure,’ Lomas said.

According to the most recent creditor report in September 2013, the fees charged by the PwC administrators  so far are approximately £714m, and are likely to rise to around £1bn as the investigation, which employs some 500 ex-Lehman and PwC staff, could take several more years.