Investors have recouped a small, but welcome additional portion of the many millions of dollars they had tied up in Metropolitan Securities Co. and Summit Securities Inc. before those affiliated companies here shut down 12 years ago.

The Metropolitan Creditors’ Trust and Summit Creditors’ Trust, overseen by plan administrator and trustee Maggie Lyons, late last month made distributions totaling $9.6 million and $800,000, respectively, to beneficiaries of the two trusts.

The distributions equated to 2.7 percent for each dollar of claim filed in the Metropolitan bankruptcy, and 0.53 percent for each dollar of claim filed in the Summit bankruptcy, Lyons said in a letter to investors that accompanied the checks.

The distribution was the seventh that has been made to Metropolitan beneficiaries, and the sixth to Summit beneficiaries. Counting the latest distributions, cash totaling $110.9 million and $25 million, respectively, now has been paid to Metropolitan and Summit investors. That equates to an overall recovery of about 30.7 percent for Metropolitan beneficiaries and 16.6 percent for Summit beneficiaries, the letter said.

Based on the likelihood of recovering close to an additional $60 million through remaining property sales, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge here last year approved a second—and likely final—five-year extension of the two trusts, which were established to liquidate the companies’ assets.

However, Lyons said shortly after the extension was granted that she hopes the remaining asset liquidations can be wrapped up and final distributions made by 2018.

She couldn’t be reached for comment about the latest distribution. However, she told the Journal last year that she was saddened by how long it’s taking to liquidate the companies’ assets, particularly given that many of the investors who lost substantial portions of their retirement income when the companies declared bankruptcy are elderly and some of them have died.

“The creditor pool is increasing because we have heirs now inheriting ownership positions in the trusts,” she said.

The distributions don’t include tens of millions of dollars’ worth of preferred stock that was wiped out when the companies collapsed.

In her latest letter to trust beneficiaries, Lyons said, “We continue to make every effort to realize fair value for the remaining assets as quickly as possible and to distribute cash when sufficient funds are available.”

She said most of the proceeds for the latest distribution came from the sale last year of properties held by OSLIC Holdings LLC, a company created and owned by the trusts. The assets and liabilities of former Metropolitan affiliate Old Standard Life Insurance Co. were transferred to OSLIC Holdings in November 2014.

Lyons said in the letter that the Idaho Director of Insurance’s approval of that transfer avoided a forced liquidation sale of Old Standard Life’s real estate and other assets.

She said the single largest remaining real estate asset for the beneficiaries of both trusts is still a 367-acre residential subdivision property in Brea, Calif., which she previously had estimated to have a recovery value of more than $40 million.

Several environmental groups two years ago filed a lawsuit that seeks to block development of that property.

“We are hopeful the California Court of Appeals will hear our case in late 2017 and that it will rule in OSLIC’s favor by the end of 2017,” Lyons said in the latest letter to trust beneficiaries.

“If this happens, OSLIC should be able to sell the Brea Property as residential development property in 2018 or 2019,” she said, somewhat extending her earlier forecast for how long it will take to resolve the litigation.

Sale of the property “will result in significant additional funds to distribute to beneficiaries,” she said.

In all, the Metropolitan and Summit creditors’ trusts have disbursed money to more than 12,000 beneficiaries.

Many investors had their life savings wiped out and hundreds of employees lost their jobs when the $2 billion-plus Metropolitan conglomerate, widely regarded here for many years as a safe and conservative investment option, collapsed.

Its demise, which included vacating its 178,000-square-foot, 18-story flagship building at 601 W. First that now is named the Wells Fargo Center, was a precursor to the financial industry crisis that swept the country a few years later.

A lot of investors laid the heaviest blame for the corporate failure on former Chairman and CEO C. Paul Sandifur Jr., who spearheaded a sizable expansion of the company that his father founded here in the 1950s.

The numerous scattered real estate holdings of Metropolitan, Summit, and affiliate companies ranged at one time from 23 acres of light-industrial-zoned land in Airway Heights and nearly 100 acres of commercial land in Everett, Wash., to a ranch in Montana, a castle in Phoenix, prime development property in Hawaii, and 10 acres of freeway frontage in Granbury, Texas, near Fort Worth.

It also formerly owned and hoped to develop the 78-acred Kendall Yards property northeast of downtown Spokane—then referred to as the Summit site.

The Metropolitan and Summit trusts were established following a bankruptcy reorganization plan confirmation in early 2006. The trusts originally were scheduled to be terminated in February 2011, but that was based on the assumption that all significant assets would be liquidated by then.