Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities firm's bankruptcy case, people familiar with the matter said.

Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer, finance chief and general counsel at MF Global, these people said. All three executives kept their jobs after the company's Oct. 31 failure in order to help Mr. Freeh untangle the firm's assets and maximize payouts to creditors.

Under the expected pay plan, the three executives and as many as 20 other MF Global employees working for Mr. Freeh would get the bonuses only if they hit specified targets such as increasing the value of MF Global's estate for creditors.

The payments could vary in size depending on progress with the estate and likely would be paid in batches throughout 2012, a person familiar with the matter said. The total payouts are expected to be smaller than bonuses received by the same executives before MF Global sank amid panic over the big bets made on European sovereign debt under Jon S. Corzine, the company's former chairman and chief executive. He resigned in November.

For example, Bradley I. Abelow, president and chief operating officer at MF Global, got a salary of $829,545 and a bonus of $1.25 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011, according to a securities filing. His total compensation was $7.6 million. After the Chapter 11 filing, Mr. Abelow agreed to cut his annual salary to $60,000, another securities filing shows.