REGULATORS have suggested that publication of the long-awaited report into the collapse of Edinburgh-based HBOS could be delayed until next year.

While Bank of England deputy governor Andrew Bailey said the report is "well under way", regulators have yet to start the so-called Maxwellisation process where those identified in the document, and their lawyers, are given the opportunity to seek changes.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) chief executive Martin Wheatley said: "It is not that it has been dropped or fallen between the cracks."

Speaking after the final public meeting of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) yesterday, Mr Wheatley said he could not predict the likely publication date.

But he confirmed that in the case of the FSA's 2011 Royal Bank of Scotland report Maxwellisation took six to seven months, suggesting that the HBOS document might not be available until next year.

As recently as September, MPs were told the HBOS report would be published in Spring 2013, ahead of the division of the FSA into the FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority, of which Mr Bailey is also chief executive.

Both the FCA and PRA are now involved in compiling the report.

FCA chairman John Griffith-Jones, former chairman of accountant KPMG, said he did not participate in meetings on the report.

His position is controversial because the accountancy firm conducted the audit of HBOS, signing off the directors' valuations of the bank's loan book.

It was also involved in reviewing credit risk processes in HBOS's corporate lending division, whose loan book lost £25 billion in the credit crunch.

Mr Griffith-Jones said that he has withdrawn from one board meeting with FCA senior independent director Sir Brian Pomeroy, former senior partner at another accountancy firm Deloitte, taking his place. The bulk of the work is being conducted by a sub committee, he said.

Only Peter Cummings, former head of HBOS's corporate lending arm, has faced sanctions for his conduct at the bank.

In September last year he was fined £500,000 and barred from working in the City, leading him to complain that his singling out was "sinister".

One former chief executive James Crosby surrendered his knighthood earlier this year and offered to take a reduced pension.

Andy Hornby, chief executive at the time of HBOS's collapse, remains head of gambling group Gala Coral.

HBOS was acquired by Lloyds TSB in a rescue takeover brokered in 2008 and the subsequent taxpayer bail-out means the combined institution is 39% owned by the taxpayer.

Mr Bailey said: "The end of the FSA did not in any sense mean the end of the HBOS report."

"The report is well under way and at a well advanced stage," he added. He said that regulators had to wait until after the action against Mr Cummings was completed before working on the report and also had to include issues raised by a recent Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards report on HBOS.

Meanwhile, regulators have shown little appetite to intervene on behalf of retail investors in bonds issued by Co-operative Bank who face large losses in a restructuring to plug the bank's £1.5 billion capital shortfall.

Mr Wheatley said that if investors feel the products were misrepresented to them, they should take action against their advisors.