Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The cost of liquidating Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may swell by more than $200 million as administrators recruit experts to help sell assets and close out trades.

Bonuses will be $103 million for 480 employees hired to administer and unwind history's largest bankruptcy, on top of base salaries of $80.5 million and severance of $19 million, according to court documents filed yesterday in New York.

The new hires will join a staff of 140, making $15.5 million with $7 million in bonuses, who've been wrapping up business since Lehman went into Chapter 11 proceedings on Sept. 15. They are getting help from former colleagues now at Barclays Plc, which bought the investment bank's North American brokerage and headquarters, and 125 restructuring experts from the firm Alvarez and Marsal.

Lehman creditors approved the expense, though every dollar spent by a bankruptcy company's estate comes out of their recovery. People familiar with Lehman's business will get more value out of the firm's assets, the creditors' committee said in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

``The committee believes that retention and recruitment of current and former debtor employees with the knowledge and economic motivation required to do the job is in the debtors' and the committee's best interests,'' the filing said.

People handling Lehman's bankruptcy, with $639 billion in liabilities, are unwinding almost 1.5 million derivatives transactions involving about 8,000 counterparties, according to court documents. So far they've terminated about 600,000 contracts and must deal with thousands of notices of default served daily. Barclays has started firing some people who used to help with the estate, according to the filing.

``Substantially all'' of the recruits may be former Lehman employees, according to the filing. Their contracts will run from three months to two years.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck in Manhattan is scheduled on Nov. 18 to review the hiring plan.

The case is In re Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., 08-13555, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: October 30, 2008 12:49 EDT