Breaking: Ethos Capital purchases Donuts
Former ICANN CEO’s private equity firm buys out Abry Partners’ stake in Donuts, giving it a controlling interest.
Top level domain firm Donuts disclosed today that Ethos Capital has purchased Abry Partners’ stake in the firm, giving Ethos a controlling interest in the firm.
I noted on this potential tie-up last month but could not confirm it with the firm.
Ethos Capital’s co-CEOs, Fadi Chehadé and Erik Brooks, led Abry Partners’ buyout of Donuts in 2018. The pair then left Abry to form Ethos Capital, a private equity firm that tried to buy .org registry Public Interest Registry for $1.135 billion. That deal was scuttled following it failed to gain ICANN’s approval.
Chehadé was formerly the CEO of ICANN. He was listed as a Donuts board member in a filing early last year, and the firm confirmed to me last month that he was on the firm’s board, which showed that Chehadé maintained a continued interest in the firm. It turns out that Ethos invested in Donuts, and now it has increased its stake by buying out Abry’s ownership.
Donuts purchased Afilias last month, and it made sense that Ethos was involved in the deal on the back end. Ethos had investors eager to put money to work in the domain name business following the .org deal fell through.
Akram Attallah, CEO of Donuts, told me today that the firm’s main focus going forward is working on the integration of Afilias. The firm is reviewing the technical assets of both firms to formulate its next-generation platform. He hopes that plan comes together by the end of this quarter, at which point the heavy lifting will begin.
