2 firms helping with FTX's bankruptcy are seeking $13 million of payment for under 3 weeks of work, including nearly $20,000 for food
- Five firms dealing with FTX's bankruptcy submitted their first applications for compensation Tuesday.
- Two of those deal with less than three weeks of work, and seek a total of $13 million.
Two of the firms dealing with the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX are seeking nearly $13 million for just under three weeks of work, court documents show.
Insider has reviewed five companies' applications for compensation, filed Tuesday in the Delaware bankruptcy court. The companies have marked down their hourly fees by 20%, but some other expenses are still asked to be fully reimbursed.
The law firm Sullivan & Cromwell is charging the highest amount for its work between November 12 and November 30 last year, to the tune of $7.7 million. More than half of that cost is for the time of the firm's 32 partners, whose usual rate of pay is $2,165 an hour. Partners did a total of 2,267 hours work on the case in the 19 days between November 12 and 30.
S&C also spent $28,000 on "non-working travel," and $7,200 on "conference room dining."
FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11 last year, and lawyers later said the company ran out of money partly because executives had a $65 billion line of credit to draw on customers' funds. The lawyer who made those comments, Andrew Dietderich of Sullivan & Cromwell, did 220 hours of work in that period to a value of $470,000, Tuesday's filings show.
The law firm's most expensive project was "asset analysis and recovery," costing $1.6 million, its application shows. John J. Ray III, the current FTX chief — who took over from Sam Bankman-Fried — told the court on Monday that his first 48 hours as CEO were "pure hell" as he worked to untangle what had happened.
Court filings from November revealed that FTX didn't have an accounting department, and its records were unreliable. Ray charged FTX $690,000 for his work over the last 50 days of 2022.
Alvarez and Marshal, a management consulting firm, is also charging for its first 20 days of work, seeking $5.2 million for a total of 7,925 hours work. That is split between around $5.02 million for work, and $180,000 for expenses, including $114,000 on accommodation, and $12,000 on meals, for which it is asking full compensation.
Three other firms also filed their applications for compensation on Tuesday, across a longer period up until the end of last year. Landis Rath & Cobb and AlixPartners are both asking for over $900,000, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is seeking $1.2 million.
Four of the firms named in this article did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, while Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan declined to comment.