Madoff's yacht, "Bull," which recently sold at auction
One of the few nice things about bankruptcies is the transparency into the fees.
That’s how we learned that Weil Gotshal hit $64 million in fees on the Lehman bankruptcy back in July, and was still billing $8 to $9 million per month long after the initial filing.
This week we got some insight into l’affaire Madoff, with Irving Picard’s most-recent fee submission. Details after the jump (including a world tour of local counsel).
The WSJ Bankruptcy Beat has the story and a copy of Baker & Hostetler‘s filing. That’s Picard’s firm and the firm is counsel to him as trustee of the Madoff estate.
The firm put in for $21,279,101.85 in fees before applying a 20% discount, which results in a net fee application of $17,023,281.48, plus expenses of $280,681.62 for the period May 1 through September 30, 2009. That’s a nice little run rate of $3.4 million per month. Picard himself billed $835,605 before discount, $668,404 net, plus $921.25 in fees.
Baker & Hostetler negotiated that discount up front. There’s another discount in footnote 1:
All Applicants have agreed to apply a 10% public interest discount to their normal billable rates, except for Attias& Levy, which has agreed to a 20% public interest discount. All Applicants have also agreed to a holdback of 20% of fees, which amount is to be deferred through the conclusion of the liquidation period or until further order of the Court.
The holdback is common, but we haven’t seen the “public interest discount” before (which isn’t saying much, we generally don’t read many fee applications). It’s not clear whether that’s after the negotiated Baker & Hostetler rate.
Other law firms seeking fees (these are the gross amounts, most are held back 20% as noted above):
- Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf (trustee of the liquidation of Madoff’s personal estate): $712,614 plus expenses of $15,072;
- Lovells (leading the UK and rest of EU matters): $580,942 plus $16,613;
- Richards Kibbe & Orbe (counsel to Picard, presumably local counsel in Delaware): $300,000 plus $6,500;
- Williams Barristers & Attorney (Bermuda counsel): $262,717 plus $30,963;
- Attias & Levy (Gibraltar): $216,793 plus$14,506;
- SCA Creque (British Virgin Islands): $106,677 but no fees;
- Schiltz & Schiltz, (Luxembourg): $85,137.75 plus $5,533;
- Higgs Johnson Truman Bodden & Co. (Cayman Islands): $37,829 plus $1,049
- Eugene F. Collins (an Irish firm that has been keeping an eye on some proceedings over there – seriously, check out their application, all they did was read other parties’ filings and attended, but did not participate in, some hearings): $21,445 plus $193;
- Schifferli Vafadar Sivilotti (Switzerland): $17,410, no fees.
Madoff apparently liked to keep his assets near nice vacation destinations.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
wow that is some big bucks!
wow that is some big bucks!