NGOs use Davos World Economic Forum Stage to Protest Sale of .org Domain Registry

[James Gannon]

Agreed, I will say tho that we can make very good assumptions, having reviewed in depth the ISOC and PIR financials available via their IRS filings we have a very good idea of the financial health of PIR. Much more so than in a private to private scenario.
I also make the important distinction between venture capital investment and private equity buyouts, they are very incomparable, and this is very much a PE style deal.

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James Gannon

From: Sam Lanfranco <lanfran at yorku.ca>
Date: Friday, 24 January 2020 at 21:31
To: James Gannon <lists at icann.guru>
Cc: Sam Lanfranco <lanfran at yorku.ca>, "NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU" <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Subject: Re[2]: NGOs use Davos World Economic Forum Stage to Protest Sale of .org Domain Registry

James,

Two very short points, meant to be shared and reflected on.

  *   Without full access business analysis, what the books of PIR and the (admittedly confidential) business plan of Ethos Capital would suggest as a range of likely sale prices for PIR is highly speculative. Either of us could be off significantly. Venture capital investments are frequently in start ups (where they work the odds and invest in a number hoping that some pay off) or in mature companies where the parts can be spun off and sold. Neither of those are the case for PIR and the .org registry and we (you and I) are only trying to make best guesstimate business valuations.
  *   That aside, the real question is to what extent is the Board doing its due diligence around the terms of the sale, the proposed ownership structure and the appropriate wording of the .org registry contract, to protect some agreed up (or implicit) notion of the public interest. There has been almost no discussion on this front.
We of course have no way of knowing either a reasonable market valuation, or the extent to which the Board, with ICANN org support, is doing their due diligence. It we were talking about Pepsi Cola or Alibaba we would be talking either as uninvolved observers, or as shareholders. Here we are supposed to be part of a stakeholder community but (almost) talking in the dark. I have little sense of who is listening, and in the outside press I fear that they are more captured by vested interests (on whatever side) than concerned with healthy informed discussion.

Within NCSG we have detailed a list of complaints and objections, some well founded and some not, but what we have not had is stakeholder community discussion focusing on the way forward. There has been a bit of back channel chat where people seem to be saying "Do it and get on with it, so we can turn to other things". I think that underestimates the long term damage to both ICANN and the .org domain name holders if this is done badly. If it is done badly it will not reflect well on the role of NCSG as the ICANN stakeholder group working on behalf of the interests of the non-commercial stakeholder community.

Sam L. (NPOC/NCSG)

---- Original Message ----
From: James Gannon <lists at icann.guru>
To: "Sam Lanfranco" <lanfran at YORKU.CA>, "NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU" <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Sent: Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: NGOs use Davos World Economic Forum Stage to Protest Sale of .org Domain Registry
Just some observations, the sale price is actually pretty much in line with the market for EBIT multipliers in the tech sale market.
Also its Ethos that is carrying the debt not PIR and is entirely normal for a PE firm, I would be much more concerned if they were not financing at least part of the deal. There is a huge amount of FUD being thrown around by so many folks who have such little exposure to the PE/VC market (I will note that Im not including you in that Sam just using this post as a springboard) and who are merely being taken for a ride by much of the biased coverage of the deal. Its entirely undermined most if not any chance the NFP sector had of putting some good controls and security around the change in control of .org, I wish that many of the organisations who are protesting this had done an ounce of research on the deal rather than jumping into activism on a sector that they clearly have not engaged in for a long time, but suddenly now there is a clear item that they can use as a cornerstone and send out lots of nice fundraising emails about.
Highly disappointing IMO.
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James Gannon

<Rest deleted for brevity> - It's in the archive!
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