Donuts, the owner of the largest gTLD portfolio, has announced it has completed the acquisition of Afilias’s domain assets, according to Domain Name Wire. Until recently Afilias owned over 20 gTLDs and is the technical operator of another 200-plus domain zones, including .ORG. This transaction means that Donuts controls over 450 domain zones in one way or another.
About two weeks ago, this deal was included in the agenda of ICANN Board’s meeting. Perhaps a possible conflict of interests was the reason for this. Donuts’ controlling stake belongs to Abry Partners, and a former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade was their advisor until recently. Moreover, Akram Atallah, who used to head the ICANN gTLD Department, is the head of Donuts. However, the ICANN Board did not find any objections to the deal and it closed before the end of the year, as planned. The amount paid for the domains remains undisclosed.
