Bankruptcy can be expensive. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which is liquidating in bankruptcy, paid its advisers $262.6 million for nine months of work, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Restructuring adviser Alvarez & Marsal LLC was the highest paid, taking in $115 million, or 44% of the total amount, followed by the investment bank's primary law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP receiving $63.7 million.
Lynn LoPucki, a UCLA professor, told Bloomberg that total fees may reach a record $906 million when all is said and done over the course of the Lehman bankruptcy case. As The Deal's Kevin Fung pointed out Tuesday in The Deal Pipeline (subscription required), Lehman "has the most firms involved (53) among all the companies that filed for bankruptcy last year."
On a positive note, Bloomberg notes that Lehman's cash rose to $12.2 billion in June, an increase of 10% from the previous month. - Gerald Magpily
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This make me nervous, if this is how tax payers are being treated in this instance imagine the beating we are going to take over the total bailout.
I guess no one can stop them really, Paulson actually jumped to the other side of the table and saved his company during the Bush watch and now Geithner is letting the huge fees continue for what amounts to clerical work.
The last sentence is a slap also, the good news is that your account is up a billion, the bad news is that we have already spent it.