How Halsey Minor Blew Tech Fortune on Way to Bankruptcy
How do you sell the technology company you founded for $1.8 billion and five years later file for personal bankruptcy? For Halsey Minor, it may have been a fascination with houses, hotels, horses and art.We move to the ugly house on the hill via yesterday's Forbes:
Minor, 47, who sold CNET Networks Inc. to CBS Corp. (CBS) in 2008, says he owes as much as $100 million and only has, at most, $50 million to pay his debts thanks to bad bets on real estate and other ventures that took him out of what he calls his technology comfort zone.
He’s made sure that he won’t be the only one who’s uncomfortable. There’s no money for his unsecured creditors, he said in his bankruptcy petition, which seeks to hand over all his eligible assets to a court official who will sell them to the highest bidder and wipe Minor’s finances clean for whatever he decides to do next.
“Choosing Chapter 7 is clearing the slate,” said Bob Rattet, a bankruptcy lawyer in White Plains, New York. “He isn’t required like Middle America to pay his debts, because they’re mostly business-related.”
The bankruptcy petition, filed May 24 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles, listed assets of as much as $50 million and debt of as much as $100 million. In Chapter 7, an impartial trustee is appointed to administer the case and sell assets such as automobiles....MORE
CNET Founder Halsey Minor's LA Estate Listed For $14.9 Million As Bankruptcy Sale
To quote the immortal lyrics of The Notorious B.I.G., we’ve got another unfortunate case of “Mo Money, Mo Problems.”Which tips us that this fixer-upper (seriously) is still on the market:
The 1990s and 2000s were good years for Halsey Minor. He founded CNET in 1993, turning it into one of the Internet’s first profitable companies, then sold it to CBS CBS -0.56% for $1.7 billion in 2008. But by comparison, the last few years haven’t been quite as stellar. Minor was named #1 on the state of California’s list of top 250 delinquent taxpayers in 2012, with unpaid taxes estimated at $10,711,699.29. And in May of this year, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Allegedly, the former multi-millionaire owes more than $100 million and only has $50 million on hand to cover his debts.
Now, as a likely part of that filing, Minor’s 7,479-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles has hit the market for $14,950,000 as a bankruptcy sale — that’s about $5 million less than what he purchased it for in 2006.... MORE
The guest house on the left is 2,618 square feet, the backyard includes an undeveloped lot, and the main home at 3800 Washington measures roughly 18,000 square feet.
Your very own Petit Trianon.
Here's the Trulia page.
Byzantium Brokerage has the listing .
