The FTX emblem on a laptop computer display screen.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos
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 line with Tuesday chapter courtroom filings. Greater than $10 million of that was for work executed in November 2022, as Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire entered chapter 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 regulation 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 firms 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 Analysis.
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 their 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. Over a 3rd of these billable hours, totaling greater than $4.8 million, had been for the work of companions, who sometimes cost the very best hourly fee.
Sullivan & Cromwell assigned greater than two dozen companions to FTX’s case, in line with the filings. Jim Bromley, a accomplice at Sullivan & Cromwell and a lead lawyer on the case, billed over 178 hours for the weeks between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30.
The authorized filings provide a glimpse into the ferocious work advisors have executed to untangle FTX’s advanced net of accounts and slipshod accounting requirements. Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys spent over 1,900 hours in November alone on work associated to analyzing and recovering FTX’s international asset base, in line with the filings.
Alvarez & Marsal, an advisory agency, billed $1.9 million for over 2,300 hours of labor on “enterprise operations,” assembly with attorneys and FTX executives, analyzing FTX’s holdings utilizing blockchain explorers, and reviewing “cybersecurity situations.” These operations included a number of hours in November corresponding with and calling Ellison, 5.3 hours in a single day imaging iPad recordsdata and different digital gadgets, and a first-day listening to convention name that lasted 2.5 hours.
Quinn Emanuel, which billed over $1.5 million for work executed between 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 journey” 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. Beneath 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 closing payment utility is filed, each time FTX’s chapter saga concludes.
That does not imply that advisors will not get their due, nonetheless. A 2019 Federal Reserve research mentioned skilled and consulting charges in Lehman Brothers’ chapter totaled greater than $2.56 billion.
Legal professionals for Sullivan & Cromwell did $40,000 price of labor simply to look in FTX’s first chapter listening to on Nov. 22, primarily based on courtroom filings of hours billed and hourly charges.
