KPMG administrators rack up £51.6m fees at MF Global

KPMG ADMINISTRATORS have racked up £51.7m in fees at collapsed investment bank MF Global since their appointment last year.

Richard Fleming, Richard Heis and Mike Pink, partners at KPMG, were appointed joint special administrators of MF Global UK on 31 October 2011.

So far, the administrators have drawn £39.3m in fees as agreed by the creditors committee, the latest six-month progress report reveals.

KPMG administrators took on the world-first special administration which was designed for investment banks and aims to return creditor funds quicker.

Pre-appointment costs came in at £206,891 for the four days prior to and including the day of appointment on 31 October.

For the first six months after the bank’s collapse, administrators charged £28.8m for their work, which was a reduction in fees of about £10.3m, according to the report.

However, for the six months to October 2012 the firm said it had incurred fees of £22.8m at an average hourly rate of £334, representing 68,497 hours of work.

The progress report highlighted that the special administrators had recovered more than £1bn into the house estate, and $923m (£572.6m) in client monies. Funds recovered in the UK are denominated in sterling, while international recoveries are announced in dollars.

The administrators also managed to distribute $179.3m to 2,362 clients. The team resoled some 650 of the 1,300 disputed claims.

Heis said: “We have seen some substantial progress made since our last progress report six months ago.

“We have resolved approximately half of the 1,300 disputed claims regarding segregated and non-segregated account classifications. Seventy MF Global UK employees have been retained until at least 30 April 2013 to work alongside the KPMG team working on this complex case.”

MF Global Finance USA Inc. served a claim of about $235.7m to the UK administrators in early October. The special administrators supplied their defence on 23 November 2012 and Finance USA has until 7 December to reply. A further directions hearing is scheduled for 14 January 2013 in the US.