Posted on 12/14/2022 10:45:25 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
FTX CEO John Ray’s go-to, three-person team has worked with him on at least three bankruptcies throughout the last three decades, including restructuring Enron in the early 2000s, Nortel in 2009 and Overseas Shipbuilding Group in 2014. Individually, the new FTX CEO will collect $1,300 hourly plus expenses for his work on the FTX case, working out to $2.6 million annualized. In one bankruptcy case Ray worked on, he billed around 156 hours in a two-month period, netting him $120,582, so his billings for FTX may run higher or lower.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Sweet gig.
I thought they were broke?....................
That’s pretty much the going hourly rate for a high-level, Wall Street Corporate lawyer.
The job itself has to be a nightmare because that place was so screwed up. So, if you want it unscrewed, you have to bring in someone very sharp, and that’s going to cost. A good CEO could save many, many times what it costs to pay him.
Highly qualified executive makes money. Film at 11.
He’s getting paid to COVER SH!T UP.
It’s just disgusting how someone who launders money is overpaid while folks who actually have to work with their hands for a living are struggling to get by.
It’s a hustle, sweetheart.
Two groups almost always get paid when bankrupticies occur:
the lawyers and the IRS.
The Chapter 11 guys got a huge up-front payment.
This is millions being stripped out of the remaining assets to go to that lawyers, accountants and consultants that won’t go to the creditors.
My lawyer charges $175 hour. One day saw her out on the street and asked her a quick question. The whole conversation was less than 30 seconds. 10 days later got a bill for $50. It still cracks me up.
Repeated since the early 90's. It's a scheme to steal.
The huge upfront payment was a retainer, placed in a trust account at the law firm. The challenge for bankruptcy lawyers is to do as much work as possible before filing the case, making sure you transfer the funds from the trust account (to your earned fees account) moments before electronically filing the case. The fees you earn pre-petition are not typically scrutinized by the court. The fees you earn after the petition filing are only payable after the court reviews and approves your application to be paid. That application can only be filed 1x per 120 days. So for the law firm, the gamble is - you might do the first 120 days of work (which is when a great deal of the total work in any chapter 11 case is done) without being paid, and without absolute certainty you will get paid. If the case is converted to Chapter 7, you are not getting paid. So, it’s better to have as much $$ in the trust account as can be scraped together. Of course, the typical bankruptcy client is in denial until the last moment, so they have typically burned all the available sources of cash before walking in your door.
The most artful phrasing I have heard on this is “You gotta pay the undertaker.”
Does he get time-and-a-half for overtime and double time for holidays?
That’s the way it was when I was worked at a steel mill.
Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I was at a meeting with my lawyer for 30 minutes, for which I fully expected to pay him his going rate. No problem there.
Then near the end of that time, he asked me a totally unrelated question about estate planning. I answered him, which brought our conversation to 45 minutes total. He billed me for that extra 15 minutes.
That was garbage behavior on his part. He brought the subject up, and I just answered the question. What was I expected to do, go mute?
That’s one reason many folks distrust lawyers. If he had been more upfront, I would have paid for that extra 15 minutes. As it was, I didn’t pay. And I found a new lawyer.
When the amounts swindled, washed, paid out, etc amount to billions and millions, 1,300 an hour is cheap. .
Cough it up Joe!
Sounds like he’s got the track record.
I remember Johnny Carson making jokes about lawyers dying of old age in their thirties if they aged according to their billable hours... or something like that.
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