Former clients of Lehman Brothers European arm were struck a blow on Friday after the UK High Court said it couldn't approve a plan to expedite the return of around $9bn (€6.3bn) of their assets.

Lehman's European administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers had applied for the court to sanction the use of legal process called a scheme of arrangement. The scheme of arrangement was designed to achieve a quicker solution by dealing with Lehman's clients collectively, rather than negotiating time-consuming bilateral agreements, PwC said last month.