CBA.com Acquired by Commonwealth Bank of Australia
According to a recent Whois change, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has acquired the CBA.com domain name. I detected a Whois change via DomainTools yesterday, and the previous registrant declined to comment about the status of the domain name. Today’s Whois change confirmed my hunch that the domain name had been sold.
CBA.com was acquired in March 2015 for $46,000 during a bankruptcy auction. I was a participant in the fast moving telephone auction. At the time, I recall that I was surprised the bidding was so strong. I was only able to place one bid in the low five figure range before the price moved beyond what I would pay for the domain name.
If I were to guess, I would say the deal was in the low to mid 6 figure range, but that is just a guess.
When I saw the Whois change yesterday, there were several groups I thought might have acquired this domain name. In addition to Commonwealth Bank of Australia, I thought there was a chance the domain name could have been acquired by the Consumer Bankers Association, The Chicago Bar Association (or one of several other Bar Associations), Craft Brew Alliance, or another entity that uses CBA for its initials. When I was participating in the auction, my thought was that CBA could stand for “collective bargaining agreement.”
Interestingly, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia recently filed a UDRP for the BankWest.com domain name. Obviously, I think they made the right move by acquiring this domain name rather than pursuing it via the legal route.
If the seller of the domain name is willing to comment on this deal in the future, I will update this article with those comments.
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About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Google + | Facebook | Email
Ryan
Amazing name has the right letters in play, AU companies love their .com.au, sometimes a bit to much, but good buy at $46K after the fact for sure.
Matt
Finally! Although they operate on CommBank.com.au, they’re commonly known as ‘CBA’ here is Australia. From what I understand, I believe Mike Robertson was the actual buyer back in 2015. To my knowledge, the CBA were the only, major Australian Bank that didn’t have the matching .COM.
Joel
The NAB doesn’t own the matching .com
Joel
The NAB don’t own nab.com – not sure why, they have enough cash to buy it.
Snoopy
They’ll eventually buy it, especially with dot com becoming more important in the Australian market. Often with something like this they’ll be trying to buy it for years before they get.
Owner will be licking his lips.
Mike Robertson
Just to clarify, I purchased the domain on behalf of a client. I also brokered the sale for them.
Matt
Thanks for clarifying, Mike, and a big congratulations to you and your client on the sale. Definitely a smart move by the CBA imo
DNPOST
We finished second in the bidding for CBA.com in 2015. We were the ones that pushed for the domain to be included in the bankruptcy. (took us 2 months to get done). Glad it worked out for Mike and his client.