British financier Guy Hands has vowed to return dough to investors despite suffering embarrassing losses from his disastrous investment in music company EMI.

In a letter to investors, Hand’s private-equity firm, Terra Firma, said it was “hopeful” that it would return all of the money plowed into Terra Firma Capital Partners III, the fund that was heavily invested in the EMI deal.

However, Hands’ letter also acknowledged that returning the 5.4 billion euros raised by Terra Firma back in 2007 could be a tall order after Terra Firma was forced to relinquish ownership of debt-laden EMI to lender Citigroup just three weeks ago.

“Given the substantial investment by TFCP III in EMI, this will not be easy, but we are encouraged by the prospects of our other investments in the fund and the potential acquisitions that our team are evaluating,” Hands wrote.

Hands added that he was “disappointed that we could not reach an agreement with Citigroup (despite great efforts from our side) that would have involved us putting in more equity simultaneously with Citigroup writing down their debt.”

The roughly $5.9 billion purchase of EMI was TFCP III’s single biggest investment.

The fund wrapped up in 2007 with 159 investors representing the lion’s share of the investment fund.

Extracting value from the fund now will mean leaning heavily on TFCP III’s other investments.

Those include aircraft leasing company Pegasus, which the fund acquired in 2009 for $2.7 billion euros ($3.6 billion), along with two investments bought in that same year: Australian beef company CDC for 215 million euros ($293 million) and US energy company EverPower for 220 million euros ($300 million). mark.decambre@nypost.com