The FTX brand on a computer display screen.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg by the use of Getty Photographs
FTX’s best chapter, criminal, and monetary advisors have billed the corporate greater than $19.6 million in charges for paintings executed in 2022, in keeping with Tuesday chapter court docket filings. Greater than $10 million of that was once for paintings executed in Nov. 2022, as Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire entered chapter coverage in Delaware.
The corporations will to start with handiest be paid just a little over $15.5 million, or 80% of the price in their paintings, beneath a court-ordered period in-between reimbursement plan.
The legislation corporations that billed FTX are Sullivan & Cromwell, Landis Rath & Cobb, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Skilled consultant Alvarez & Marsal and monetary consultant AlixPartners additionally billed the corporate.
Probably the most paintings that the companies billed for concerned conferences with different corporations that still had been billing FTX for his or her time, or concerned 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 number one criminal corporations, billed the corporate a mixed $10.7 million for over 8,400 hours of labor. Landis Rath & Cobb billed $1.16 million for paintings executed between Nov. 11 and Nov. 30.
Sullivan & Cromwell, a goal for each lawmakers and Bankman-Fried over their pre-petition paintings with FTX, sought over $9.5 million in reimbursement for over 6,500 billable hours, within the duration between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30. Over a 3rd of the ones billable hours, totaling over $4.8 million, had been for the paintings of companions, who most often rate the very best hourly charge.
Sullivan & Cromwell assigned over two dozen companions to FTX’s case, in keeping with the filings. Jim Bromley, a spouse at Sullivan & Cromwell and a lead lawyer at the case, billed over 178 hours for the weeks between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30.
The criminal filings be offering a glimpse into the ferocious paintings executed by way of advisors to untangle FTX’s complicated internet of accounts and slipshod accounting requirements. Sullivan & Cromwell legal professionals spent over 1,900 hours in November on my own on paintings associated with inspecting and improving FTX’s world asset base, in keeping with the filings.
Alvarez & Marsal, an advisory company, billed $1.9 million for over 2,300 hours of labor on “industry operations,” assembly with legal professionals, FTX executives, inspecting FTX’s holdings the use of blockchain explorers, and reviewing “cybersecurity situations.” The ones operations incorporated more than one hours in November corresponding with and calling Ellison, 5.3 hours in one 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 paintings executed between November and December, assigned over a dozen legal professionals to the case, 9 of whom had been companions. A kind of companions, Sascha Rand, billed over $13,000 for a unmarried day’s paintings in November, corresponding and reviewing first-day problems. Every other Quinn legal professional filed for over $17,000 on a “non-working shuttle” day commute starting Nov. 21, returning on Nov. 22.
AlixPartners, a monetary consulting company, billed $1.1 million for paintings executed over the process just a little greater than a month, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 31.
FTX’s advisors are not entitled to their complete charges but. Below an period in-between reimbursement order, skilled advisors are paid 80% in their filed charges, only if no objection is filed. Complete reimbursement for criminal and consultant charges is not going to happen till a last rate utility is filed, each time FTX’s chapter saga concludes.
That does not imply that advisors would possibly not get their due, alternatively. A 2019 Federal Reserve learn about stated skilled and consulting charges in Lehman Brothers’ chapter had been over $2.56 billion.
Legal professionals for Sullivan & Cromwell did $40,000 price of labor simply to seem in FTX’s first chapter listening to on Nov. 22, in response to court docket filings of hours billed and hourly charges.