amp cobb

FTX bankruptcy fees near $20 million for 51 days of work

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 November 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 the firms billed for involved taking meetings with other companies that also were billing FTX for their time or 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 more than 8,400 hours of work. Landis Rath & Cobb billed $1.16 million for work

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February 10, 2023 by ATTORNEY

FTX Has Recovered ‘Over $5B’ in Assets, Bankruptcy Attorney Says

Crypto exchange FTX has recovered more than $5 billion in different assets, not including another $425 million in crypto held by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, a bankruptcy attorney said during a hearing Wednesday.

There’s still a sum missing in what is owed to customers and the amount is still unclear, the attorney said.

“We have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency and liquid investment securities measured at petition date value. [It] just does not ascribe any value to holdings of dozens of illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, where our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token,” said Landis Rath & Cobb attorney Adam Landis on FTX’s behalf.

The announcement substantially raises the total FTX claims it holds, after the company’s new leadership said it could only find just over $1 billion on Dec. 20, 2022. The total amount FTX owes its creditors is still unclear. In initial bankruptcy filings, the company’s management checked off the box indicating a figure between $1 billion and $10 billion.

Sam Bankman-Fried instructed his lieutenant, Gary Wang, to create a “backdoor” for Alameda to borrow from

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January 30, 2023 by ATTORNEY
March 2023
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