FTX Advisors Bill Bankrupt Firm $103M in Q1 | Crypto News
- The legal and consulting firms involved in FTX's bankruptcy proceedings are set to receive $103 million in fees and expenses for Q1 2023.
- Five firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell and Alvarez & Marshal, billed FTX a total of $36.4 million in March alone.
- FTX's legal team is eyeing a potential reboot of the trading platform as early as April 2024, despite severe financial troubles over the past six months.
The legal and consulting firms involved in cryptocurrency exchange
FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings are set to receive a whopping $103 million in fees and expenses over the first quarter of this year
This comes as court filings between April 28 and May 2 revealed that five firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell, Alvarez & Marshal, AlixPartners, Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Landis Rath & Cobb, billed FTX a total of $36.4 million in March alone. The figures for January and February were also high, at $34.2 million and $32.5 million respectively.
Sullivan & Cromwell topped the list with the largest paycheck of $14.1 million in fees and expenses for March alone, adding to a total of $44.4 million for the first quarter. Partners at the firm received $2,165 per hour, while paralegals and legal analysts received $425 and $595 per hour, respectively.
Alvarez & Marsal came in next, billing over $13.8 million in March for its financial analysis and accounting procedures. It was the firm’s third successive billing of over $10 million since it was appointed as FTX’s restructuring advisor when the exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2020. Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Landis Rath & Cobb billed FTX $3.19 million and $644,000 in March, respectively, for respective totals of $7.3 million and $1.9 million over the first quarter.
The FTX case has involved a team of over 180 lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and Landis Rath & Cobb. In March, AlixPartners analyzed decentralized finance products and tokens in FTX's possession, resulting in their largest invoice of $4.51 million. The firm's total billing for the quarter amounted to $10.2 million.
Despite its six months of severe financial troubles, FTX has not given up yet. The exchange has recovered $7.3 billion in assets, and its legal team is looking to potentially reboot the trading platform as early as April 2024.
Also, read- Amnesty Retracts AI Images of Colombian Protests
