Lehman Wind Down Costs Hit Three Quarters Of A Billion Dollars

How much does it cost to clean up the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy mess? Hundreds of millions of dollars, apparently. The firm that provides the liquidation service for the court, Alvarez & Marsal, made $262 million. The company also proves Lehman with its temp CEO Bryan Marsal.

In all, the Lehman wind-down has cost $732 million through the end of March based on court documents reviewed by Bloomberg.

The other big winners in the Lehman case are law firms. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy made $47.7 million, and Jenner & Block LLP made $48.4 million. Jenner provides the Lehman examiner Anton Valukas.

Why haven’t creditors object to the fees?  Apparently they have, according to filings. The judge in the matter believes that the fees are reasonable in light of the complexity of the bankruptcy. What the law firms bill per hour or whether they charge flat fees is not publicly known.

The fees do beg the question of to what extent the court put key contracts to dissolve Lehman out for bid, or whether the firms were asked to do some of their work at lower than market fees to help creditors get reasonable settlements. But, many of those creditors are rich corporations like Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) and UBS (NYSE: UBS).

The court must have little sympathy for Lehman’s creditors. Otherwise why would it let almost three-quarters of a billion dollars walk out the door?

Douglas A. McIntyre