A UK firm, Keydata Investment Services, that designs and distributes structured products for investors, has been placed into administration due to insolvency, the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator, said yesterday.

Dan Schwarzmann and Mark Batten of PricewaterhouseCoopers have been appointed joint administrators, the statement from the FSA said.

The structured products sector was rocked last autumn when Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, went bankrupt. The firm manufactured many of these products; its demise raised concerns about whether advisors and investors were sufficiently aware of counterparty risks in such investment vehicles.

A report in the The Times (of London) said the insolvency of Keydata will affect up to 80,000 individual investors with £700 million ($1.126 billion) of investments.

Investors, financial advisors and other interested parties can contact PwC for further details, the FSA added.