Bills totaling more than $1.2 million submitted to bankruptcy court

There's big money in bankruptcy and if anyone should know that it is the people at FTI Consulting. Bills totaling more than $1.2 million for the month of December were submitted Friday to the judge handling the O'Sullivan bankruptcy and more than half of that total, $614,818.96 came from FTI.
In just two and a half months, the company has charged more than $1.2 million for its services. They had already charged the company nearly a quarter of a million dollars before the court even officially approved their hiring, according to court documents. The company was hired to offer restructuring advice.
At the time when O'Sullivan officials first petitioned the court to allow them to retain FTI, they had already paid the company a $75,000 retainer.
The deal approved by the bankruptcy court includes a clause which would give FTI a 10 percent incentive fee if it comes up with "specific efficiency improvements, cost reductions or revenue enhancements."
The December bill showed 34 FTI employees, with pay ranging from $65 an hour to $625 an hour, worked on the O'Sullivan restructuring, including numerous billings for a "timeline for new product development."
Among other bills filed with the court Friday:
-$131,426.65 from Lazard, Freres & Co., mostly for preparing the financing plan to enable O'Sullivan to climb out of bankruptcy.
-$216,000 from the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors
-$27,427.46 from Lamberth, Cifelli, Stokes & Stout, another company offering legal advice
-$8,227.50 from Edward Howard & Company, which among other items, as noted in an earlier post, came up with a strategy to deal with media coverage of the firing of numerous employees and paid someone $330 per hour for keeping up with The Turner Report.
-$334,985 from Dechert LLP for the work of 12 people whose per hour pay ranged from $150 to $750. The bill also included $1,260 for "staff overtime."