Former billionaire Halsey Minor files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
Last October we featured the story of the $25 million Koshland Mansion in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. The price of the property has now been slashed to $21 million and today its former owner, Halsey Minor, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with liabilities of some $100 million.
In his filing, Minor, who sold his CNET Networks Inc. news website for $1.8 billion in 2008, cited $50 million to $100 million in liabilities with 60 creditors, and assets of $10 million to $50 million.
In an email to reporters (according to the Los Angeles Times) Minor commented:
“A case might have been made that I should never have strayed from technology. However, I like doing things outside my comfort zone, and I believe that willingness in part accounts for my tech successes”.
Charlottesville’s The Daily Progress published a further email statement from Minor in which he added:
“I love being an entrepreneur even though it involves financial risk. I have been fortunate enough to play a meaningful role in building great companies like CNET Networks, Salesforce.com, Rhapsody, NBCi, the service known as Google Voice and others. But if you win some you are going to lose some too”.
In their report on the story, Bloomberg Businessweek reveal that the address Minor gives on his filing is situated in the “90210 zip code made famous by the television series”. They continue:
“It’s a two-story white brick house in the “flats” of Beverly Hills, in a neighborhood of single-family homes just off of Wilshire Boulevard, near the Beverly Hilton hotel. While these aren’t the larger, more ostentatious homes in the “hills” of Beverly Hills, they can still fetch high valuations. One residence nearby sold for $3.2 million in November”.
“A woman came to the door of the house, but didn’t open it to a reporter. There were three SUVs in the driveway — a black Mercedes Benz, a black Range Rover and a black GMC Yukon. Gardeners were mowing the lawn, and there was a bike parked in the driveway”
“The woman shook her head ‘no’ when asked if Minor was home and then walked away from the door”.
In the same article, Bob Rattet, a bankruptcy lawyer, commented:
“Choosing Chapter 7 is clearing the slate… He isn’t required like Middle America to pay his debts, because they’re mostly business-related”.
Somehow we doubt that this will be the end of the tale of Halsey Minor.
Read our feature on the Koshland Mansion at: http://thesteepletimes.com/opulence-splendour/going-under-the-kosh/
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