Minor’s Swivel, continued

Updated

Our recent post about Halsey Minor, and how he is starting a new company called Swivel, might have been off a bit.

That original post relied on a story by Dan Farber, and we didn’t have time to confirm his facts. But here’s Private Equity Week, with a slightly different take. It suggests Minor is actually trying to sell Swivel, one of the assets of Grand Central, in a firesale.

According to documents obtained by PE Week, nearly all of the assets of Grand Central Communications-one of three companies launched by 12 Entrepreneuring-are about to go to the highest bidder. The minimum acceptable “all cash” bid for the assets? A mere $250,000.

…The Grand Central assets that are being auctioned, according to a memo issued by Grand Central’s assignee, are primarily software programs. The first is Swivel, referred to in the memo as…

“a workspace on the Internet that combines best-of-breed applications that help managers more productively run their business.” Grand Central is also selling a software application called Business Services Network that “allows teams working on projects to leverage a growing collection of pre-existing business services and easily share new services,” and Bluespark Small Business Intranet Portal, “a fully integrated system of on-demand applications including Accounting, HR, Payroll, Email, Calendaring, Salesforce Automation and More.” (The memo notes that “the Bluespark Portal is not for sale” but rather that the “integration platform that belongs to Grand Central is the item that is available and common to both Swivel and BlueSpark.”)

Enough to remain confusing; will try to sort through upon return.

Update: We’ve made some initial unconfirmed headway into understanding the apparent discrepancy. We’re hearing Minor will be the only bidder for the assets of Swivel. He apparently has already started Swivel, and is now bidding for the company’s code.