Ann: Cirralto to Acquire E-Commerce Company Greenshoots, page-225

What's hard to understand??
AF and 2 other unrelated parties held the shares in a shelf company that wasn't being used for anything. The Greenshoots team needed to transfer their IP from a trust structure to a company for the acquisition to be able to proceed. To make life easier and save the Greenshoots people some $$, AF gave them the existing shelf company rather than them having to pay to setup a new one.

CRO didn't pay $1.5m for a shell. They have paid $1.5m in shares to acquire the IP that has been transferred from a trust structure to the shelf company and hence the shelf company's value was equal to the value of the IP at the time the acquisition was executed.