The FTX emblem on a laptop computer display.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs
FTX’s prime chapter, authorized and monetary advisors have billed the corporate greater than $19.6 million in charges for work executed in 2022, in keeping with Tuesday chapter court docket filings. Greater than $10 million of that was for work executed in November 2022 as Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire entered bankruptcy safety in Delaware.
The corporations will initially solely be paid a little bit over $15.5 million, or 80% of the worth of their work, below a court-ordered interim compensation plan.
The legislation corporations that billed FTX are Sullivan & Cromwell, Landis Rath & Cobb, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Skilled advisor Alvarez & Marsal and monetary advisor AlixPartners additionally billed the corporate.
A few of the work the corporations billed for concerned taking conferences with different corporations that additionally had been billing FTX for his or her time or corresponding with former and present executives, together with Caroline Ellison, the previous CEO of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Landis Rath & Cobb and Sullivan & Cromwell, FTX’s main authorized corporations, billed the corporate a mixed $10.7 million for greater than 8,400 hours of labor. Landis Rath & Cobb billed $1.16 million for work executed between Nov. 11 and Nov. 30.
Sullivan & Cromwell, a goal for each lawmakers and Bankman-Fried over the agency’s pre-petition work with FTX, sought greater than $9.5 million in compensation for over 6,500 billable hours within the interval between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30. Roughly half of these billable hours, totaling greater than $4.8 million, had been for the work of companions, who usually cost the very best hourly fee.
Sullivan & Cromwell assigned greater than two dozen companions to FTX’s case, in keeping with the filings. Jim Bromley, a accomplice at Sullivan & Cromwell and a lead legal professional on the case, billed over 178 hours for the weeks between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30.
The authorized filings supply a glimpse into the ferocious work advisors have executed to untangle FTX’s complex web of accounts and slipshod accounting standards. Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys spent over 1,900 hours in November alone on work associated to analyzing and recovering FTX’s global asset base, in keeping with the filings.
Alvarez & Marsal, an advisory agency, billed $1.9 million for over 2,300 hours of labor on “business operations,” assembly with attorneys and FTX executives, analyzing FTX’s holdings utilizing blockchain explorers, and reviewing “cybersecurity scenarios.” These operations included a number of hours in November corresponding with and calling Ellison, greater than 5 hours in a single day imaging iPad information and different digital units, and a first-day listening to convention name that lasted 2 1/2 hours.
Quinn Emanuel, which billed over $1.5 million for work executed in November and December, assigned greater than a dozen attorneys to the case, 9 of whom had been companions. A kind of companions, Sascha Rand, billed over $13,000 for a single day’s work in November, corresponding and reviewing first-day points. One other Quinn lawyer filed for over $17,000 on a “non-working travel” day journey starting Nov. 21 and returning on Nov. 22.
AlixPartners, a monetary consulting agency, billed $1.1 million for work executed over the course of a little bit greater than a month, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 31.
FTX’s advisors aren’t entitled to their full charges but. Underneath an interim compensation order, skilled advisors are paid 80% of their filed charges, offered that no objection is filed. Full compensation for authorized and advisor charges won’t happen till a last charge utility is filed, every time FTX’s chapter saga concludes.
That does not imply that advisors will not get their due, nonetheless. A 2019 Federal Reserve study stated skilled and consulting charges within the Lehman Brothers’ chapter saga totaled greater than $2.56 billion.
Attorneys for Sullivan & Cromwell did $40,000 value of labor simply to seem in FTX’s first bankruptcy hearing on Nov. 22, based mostly on court docket filings of hours billed and hourly charges.
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