Lehman Brothers winding up could take 10 years

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"This has been the most complex insolvency case I have ever dealt with and am ever likely to," said Lomas, who has previously worked on the collapses of MG Rover and BCCI bank.

So far the administrators have recovered £5.5 billion from the complex tangle of trades and investments left behind when Lehman collapsed a year ago. But Lomas said there are "many billions" left to recover.

That includes the $8 billion (£4.8 billion) which was swept back to Lehman's New York headquarters two days before the US bank went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Lomas is preparing to sue the parent company on Wall Street for some $140 billion, but does not expect to see anything like that number recovered after the case has been dragged through the US courts.

He said: "I think we will break the back of the case in the next 30 to 36 months, but the rest of the case will continue for many years after that."

PwC is employing some 200 of its own staff on the case and has retained 400 former Lehman employees to help disentangle its trading and investment positions. At the time of its collapse Lehman was the largest trader on the London Stock Exchange.

PwC has earned more than £120 million from its work at Lehman over the last year.