Quinn Emanuel joins Crypto Broker Voyager’s bankruptcy team
Crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. has hired a major law firm to investigate the company’s insiders’ role in a massive loan to troubled hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
Manhattan attorney Susheel Kirpalani is leading the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan team handling the investigation, according to a court filing Thursday. Kirpalani charges the company roughly $2,000 an hour for his services.
Voyager in March loaned Three Arrows 15,250 Bitcoins and $350 million before the hedge fund imploded, triggered by the TerraUSD stablecoin collapse and broader decline in cryptoassets, court filings show.
The coins and cash are valued at $674 million, according to a bankruptcy filing Voyager filed this week against Three Arrows, which is liquidating assets in a British Virgin Islands court. It is unclear whether Voyager will collect its unsecured claim in the process, but it has said it is pursuing “all available avenues” to collect the money.
Quinn Emanuel’s legal team is considering whether Voyager should pursue claims against “insiders” related to the Three Arrows loan, according to a court document filed Thursday.
Kirpalani and the other lawyers represent a Voyager special committee composed of two independent directors who joined the company when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month.
Kirpalani, head of Quinn Emanuel’s bankruptcy and restructuring group, declined to comment on his appointment.
He is a highly ranked restructuring partner in New York who has represented independent directors or special committees in the bankruptcies of J. Crew Group Inc., JC Penney Company Inc. and others. He also played a role in the liquidation of Bernard Madoff’s defunct firm.
Kirpalani’s hourly rate is typically $2,130 an hour, the firm said in the lawsuit, but he and the other attorneys will give a 10% discount on their rates, a standard practice in bankruptcy cases. Quinn Emanuel’s first-year associates on the case typically charge $830 an hour, according to the filing.
A handful of Big Law lawyers are charging more than $2,000 an hour after billing rates soared during a period of intense demand for corporate lawyers over the past two years.
Voyager’s special committee includes Jill Frizzley, a former Weil Gotshal & Manges restructuring partner who now provides independent board advisory services as president of Wildrose Partners.
Three Arrows’ founders, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, re-emerged five weeks after the firms collapsed, Bloomberg reported. The pair, likening the implosion to the failure of Long Term-Capital Management, are moving the business to Dubai.
Attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis are representing Voyager in the closely watched bankruptcy case, which could provide important decisions on how crypto assets are treated in restructurings. The firm also represents troubled crypto lenders Celsius Network LLC and Babel Finance, as it has emerged as an early leader in restructuring advice to broken crypto firms.
