John Ray III, the current CEO of failing FTX and the attorney managing the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings of the cryptocurrency company originally founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, is currently raking in a salary to the tune of $1,300 per hour for his current role and is additionally paying a group of three other executives close to $975 per hour each throughout the proceedings.
Just last month, FTX filed for bankruptcy after a number of its users found out that the company was heavily intertwined with the founder’s sister company, Alameda Research; both were under the thumb of Bankman-Fried and a large group of Amateur executives doing their work from the Bahamas in high prices luxury penthouses. Just recently the disgraced entrepreneur was taken into custody this week by a group of police officials out in the Bahamas, where his company hosts their headquarters, as American securities regulators slammed him with accusations of fraud.
As a seasoned lawyer who previously oversaw the bankruptcy of defunct energy company Enron, Ray is currently raking in $1,300 per hour for his role, as explained via a court document. He still sits as an employee of Oak hill Advisory, where he serves as the managing director.
Ray has also been joined in his work by Kathryn Schultea, Mary Cilia, and Raj Perubhatla, who he chose to appoint as the chief administrative officer, chief financial officer, and chief information officer. Each of the three has been issued a fee of $975 per hour, as explained in the court document.
When calculated, Ray is earning a tidy sum of $2.6 million per year, assuming that he works a total of 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. He pulled in $1.2 million on an annualized basis in 2005 when he worked on the Enron restructuring, as explained by a CNBC report. The trio of co-executives is managing to pull in close to $2 million per year each with the same assumptions made. Altogether, the group of executives seems to be earning a total of $4,225 per hour, or the equivalent of $8.45 million per year.
Recently, Ray testified Tuesday in front of the members of the House Financial Services Committee by claiming that he is trying to “mitigate, to the greatest extent possible, the harm suffered” by investors and customers alike of FTX. He repeated earlier statements that this cryptocurrency exchange was the most egregious failure in corporate governance that he had seen in his entire working life.
“Although our investigation is ongoing and detailed findings will have to await its conclusion, the FTX Group’s collapse appears to stem from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets,” he commented.
