Investment firms divvy up Divine Bankruptcy court to rule on sales next week

It took Divine Inc. CEO Andrew "Flip" Filipowski 18 months to create a software company by buying dozens of cash-strapped firms. It took lawyers more than 25 hours in a marathon negotiating session this week to divvy up the bankrupt company's businesses during a court-supervised auction. Divine's lawyers recommended four separate investment groups as the winning bidders for businesses scattered from Boston to Georgia, according to court documents. Sources familiar with the bidding said the four groups bid a combined total of $54 million. A final decision on the pending sales will be made next week by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Boston. According to Divine's court filing, an affiliate of Golden Gate Capital won the bidding for eShare Communications Inc., a Georgia-based telephone marketing software business, and several other businesses, including MindAlign, which offers instant-messaging software used by major financial institutions. Golden Gate had offered to buy all Divine's assets for $38 million beforethe auction. The San Francisco-based private equity firm teamed up in the bidding with Oak Investment Partners. A second group called Saratoga LLC was the high bidder for Divine's content management software businesses, including the former ePrise and Open Market, as well as Divine's Web-hosting and management businesses.

No information was available Thursday about Saratoga. Principals in a firm called Outtask Inc. won the bidding to buy back their company, and Little Bear Investments LLC won the bidding for Divine's venture-capital portfolio.

Paul Cooper, co-founder of Chicago-based Perceptual Robotics, which is among the businesses that Divine is selling, said the auction is not the end of Divine's winding down. "All the key operating decisions still need to be hammered out," he said. Not included in the auction were Divine's library subscription service business, RoweCom Inc., and the former Divine Whittman-Hart Inc., which were sold separately.