A Major Minor Bankruptcy

I’m not exactly proud to say it, but I must admit that a story about a tech multi-multi-millionaire who’s frittered away his fortune to the point where he has to file for personal bankruptcy just cannot read without some measure of schadenfreude.

Thus my read about one Halsey Minor – extra points for his quite excellent moniker: not quite Chadsworth Osborne, Junior, but right up there – was at least a modestly joyful experience, tempered only by a profound sense of puzzlement.

Thinking about blowing so much money, after all, will bring out the WTF in anyone, will it not?

It’s not clear exactly how major Minor’s losses were. What is known is that he netted $200M when CNET, which he founded, was sold, and that he was an early investor in Salesforce.com, which must have made him a few bucks more.

Today, he lists assets of $50 million and liabilities of $100 million.

However you do the math, in this case, one thing we’re sure of, some rich get richer and some rich get poorer.

In the meantime, in between time, what’s clearer is where the fortune went: houses, hotels, horse farms and art.

Art seems to have been a big part of his downfall.

“For Halsey Minor, collecting contemporary art and design is a hunger that cannot be satisfied, a thirst that cannot be quenched,” said the notes inside the Phillips catalog of the single-owner sale of Minor’s art works in 201o. “It is this addiction to the nectar, to put together one of the most formidable collections of Marc Newson and Ed Ruscha, for instance, that drives him.” (Source: Forbes.)

One tumbler-full of that nectar was part of a Richard Prince series of disturbing paintings of nurses, paintings that strike me as kinked-up potboiler covers. But which obviously caught the discerning eye and soon-to-be-emptied wallet of Halsey Minor. He also sold off an aluminum couch by Marc Newson.

Aluminum couch, eh? I may not know much about contemporary art – other than being able to give a work a thumbs up or a thumbs down on whether I’d want it hanging over my non-aluminum living room couch - but I’m pretty darned sure that an aluminum couch would be uncomfortable. Certainly not something one would want to lounge around on, sipping nectar, appreciating art, and thinking about horses.

Minor didn’t get to enjoy his blue-eyed nurse or aluminum couch for all that long. He had sold them off a few years ago to make good on a court judgment on a bank loan. His art jones also got him trouble with both Sotheby’s and Christie’s a while back, when he bid on $25 million worth of stuff that he never paid for. (Reading about the Sotheby’s and Christie’s brouhahas was exceedingly confusing, and the tiffs apparently went both ways.)

Art wasn’t Minor’s only weakness. So were horse breeding and racetracks. Among his creditors are horse farms and an equine healthcare center, and he also had at some point purchased/tried to purchase interests in tracks including Hialeah and Santa Ana. (When it comes to the ponies, you can contain your losses if you limit yourself to the two-buck bet window at the track, rather than investing in the horses and horse tracks themselves.)

Houses and hotels were also of interest to Minor.

Unfortunately, it’s more complex than moving from the little green houses to the big red hotels in Monopoly, where you can always limit your losses by tossing the board over and going to your room in a sulk.

After years of technology investing, Minor embraced real estate. In February 2008, Minor bought the Carter’s Grove Plantation from Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for $15.3 million. The 400-plus acre estate, with a mile of frontage on the James River, was at one time a museum. Its 12-bedroom Georgian mansion was built for Carter Burwell, a scion of one of the richest families in colonial Virginia, in the 1750s. Architect magazine said Minor planned to raise racehorses on the property. (Source: Business Week.)

Carter’s Grove filed for its own bankruptcy a couple of years ago, as did an entity called Minor Family Hotels, which was building a hotel in Minor’s hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Then there’s the house he actually lives in in Beverly Hills.

Bet that first wife was happy that she got out with a cool $50 million before this blue-eyed nurse of a bankruptcy hit the fan.

All these half-asset assets are just dizzying, frankly.

Although art, horses, and real estate may have been nectar to Minor:

“A case might have been made that I should never have strayed from technology,” Minor said in the e-mail, according to the Daily Progress. “However, I like doing things outside my comfort zone, and I believe that willingness in part accounts for my tech successes.”

Well, I don’t like doing things outside my comfort zone, which is probably why I never had, and never will have, $200 million to my name.

But I’m pretty sure that, if I were in possession of $200 million, there is no way on God’s green earth that I would have whittled it down to $50 million in assets vs. $100 million in liabilities.

My comfort zone just wouldn’t have let me.

The first thing I would have done with that kind of money was set aside enough to live comfortably the rest of my life.

Sure, I would likely live in a marginally nicer home, have marginally nicer furniture, and marginally cooler clothing.

But I can’t conceive of a universe in which I would put it all at risk because I coveted a painting of a blue-eyed nurse or an aluminum couch I really didn’t need.

Not that I’ll ever know…

As I noted, there’s some schadenfreude at large in reading about Halsey Minor. But the more I read about him, the more the feeling is pure and utter bewilderment. W.T.F.?