August kind of sucked for the management and many employees of Tucson-based Asarco LLC — Bankuptcy Judge Richard Schmidt recommended that their old nemesis, Grupo Mexico, get the company instead of their favored firm, Sterlite Industries.

But when events get you down, you can always sit down and count your money. In August, Asarco made about a $40 million profit on revenue of about $100 million, according to the company’s monthly filing for August. That was way up from July’s results: a $24 million profit on $76 million in revenue.

Executives and providers of professional services also did nicely despite the courtroom setback. In a figure I can’t yet understand, the filing reports that Asarco CEO Joseph Lapinsky made $418,263 in August. That was up from $46,822 in July — a mysteriously vast discrepancy. I asked General Counsel Doug McAllister about this, and he didn’t immediately know what explains the high August figure, which would amount to about 13 percent of the total Lapinsky ha’s received since he took Asarco over in July 2006.

Baker Botts, Asarco’s law firm, took in $2.5 million in August for its work on the case, bringing the firm’s total payments to more than $104 million during the bankruptcy.

Since filing for bankruptcy in August, 2005, four years ago, Asarco has made a profit of about $1.54 billion, while pulling in revenue of $5.47 billion.