[governance] Fwd: [Internet Policy] [article] The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

[parminder]

a forward, for those perhaps not following what others are talking about
this sale....

There is no reason for IGC to soft-paddle this institutional
corruption... Even small non profits cant sell their petty assets
without proper bids and/or auction ...

parminder



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[Internet Policy] [article] The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold
for less than half its valuation
Date: 	Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:22:43 +0000
From: 	Ayden Férdeline via InternetPolicy <internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org>
Reply-To: 	Ayden Férdeline <ferdeline at protonmail.com>
To: 	ISOC INTERNETPOLICY <internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org>



Sam Klein has published a new article that summarises well many of the
unanswered questions and concerns that ISOC members have about the sale
of PIR:

http://blogs.harvard.edu/sj/2019/12/02/the-dot-org-fire-sale-sold-for-half-its-valuation/

  * No competitive bid.  (/ISOC suggests that they had at least two
    bids. But the first public mention of bids is in the minutes of
    their 10/28 board meeting, and by 10/29 Sullivan had entered into
    exclusive talks with Ethos./)
  * No public market / sale analysis.  (/This makes it hard to determine
    whether the parties involved built in incentives to close a deal
    quickly, even if it was well under the market rate for the registry.
    At least one independent assessment put the value closer to $4B/)
  * No public story of how the deal came together.  (/The outline:
    Nevett is approached by Ethos for the first time in September, and
    has a complete offer to put before the ISOC board by late October,
    developed in private./)
  * No discussion of alternatives to financing an endowment.  (/National
    bond funds and other options have been suggested that could have
    allowed ISOC to diversify its investments without selling PIR
    outright./)
  * Analyses based on an assumption of no future growth.  (/PIR’s
    operating income has grown 20% each of the past two years, without
    raising prices; the new owner plans to raise prices continuously if
    steadily./)
  * No assessment of future impact or development of the registry. 
    (/Many questions about pricing, censorship, and squatting bear
    addressing, both for Ethos and for whoever it sells the registry to
    in the future. An assumption that no one would be hurt if prices
    were raised to $60/yr bears addressing in detail./)


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