The FTX logo on a laptop screen.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg via Getty Images
FTX’s top bankruptcy, legal, and financial advisors have billed the company more than $19.6 million in fees for work done in 2022, according to Tuesday bankruptcy court filings. More than $10 million of that was for work done in Nov. 2022, as Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire entered bankruptcy protection in Delaware.
The firms will initially only be paid a little over $15.5 million, or 80% of the value of their work, under a court-ordered interim compensation plan.
The law firms that billed FTX are Sullivan & Cromwell, Landis Rath & Cobb, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Professional advisor Alvarez & Marsal and financial advisor AlixPartners also billed the company.
Some of the work that the firms billed for involved meetings with other companies that also were billing FTX for their time, or involved corresponding with former and current executives, including Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Landis Rath & Cobb and Sullivan & Cromwell, FTX’s primary legal firms, billed the company a combined $10.7 million for over 8,400 hours of work. Landis Rath & Cobb billed $1.16 million for work done between Nov. 11 and Nov. 30.
Sullivan & Cromwell, a target for both lawmakers and Bankman-Fried over their pre-petition work with FTX, sought over $9.5 million in compensation for over 6,500 billable hours, in the period between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30. Over a third of those billable hours, totaling over $4.8 million, were for the work of partners, who typically charge the highest hourly rate.
Sullivan & Cromwell assigned over two dozen partners to FTX’s case, according to the filings. Jim Bromley, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and a lead attorney on the case, billed over 178 hours for the weeks between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30.
The legal filings offer a glimpse into the ferocious work done by advisors to untangle FTX’s complex web of accounts and slipshod…
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