While looking through my DomainTools Registrant Alert email yesterday morning, I noticed domain names from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration Inc. transferred to a company called NameFind Cayman Islands LTD. The domain names are still registered at Uniregistrar Corp. (Uniregistry). I assume GoDaddy created this entity in the wake of its deal to acquire Frank Schilling’s company and the reported 350,000+ domain names in Frank’s portfolio.
GoDaddy has a domain name portfolio holding company called NameFind LLC. As far as I am aware, the bulk of domain names acquired by GoDaddy in various portfolio deals have moved into the NameFind LLC account. The NameFind LLC company has a mailing address in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is the same address as Afternic’s office.
NameFind Cayman Islands LTD. has a Whois registrant address in the Cayman Islands:
Units 3-105 TO 3-112, Governors Square
West Bay, Grand Cayman, KY
KY1-1300
Because the deal was announced to be closed in Q2 of 2020, this could be some sort of temporary holding company created in the interim. If the deal doesn’t close for some reason, perhaps it would be helpful for tracking purposes or for other purposes to keep these domain names in the portfolio of a third party company. I am not sure if NameFind Cayman Islands LTD. is owned exclusively by GoDaddy, by Uniregistry, or both companies.
It will be interesting to see if this company is utilized once the deal closes. I would imagine there could be tax advantages to keeping the company operating in the Cayman Islands rather than the USA. I am not a tax expert nor do I have tax expertise, so that is just conjecture. It doesn’t look like all domain names have moved to this portfolio yet, so it remains to be seen whether this is something permanent or temporary.
I reached out to representatives from GoDaddy when I saw the Whois change yesterday, but I did not receive an answer to my questions.
This was owned by Name Administration and was settled today:
https://www.udrpsearch.com/wipo/d2020-0076
Are there any details about the terms of the settlement?
NameFind LLC was founded: 2012 and is a
Main organization: Go Daddy Operating Company, LLC see this Namescon 2018 link https://youtu.be/cXPQzDRYMmY
GoDaddy is a shady cheap-ass company. It takes a lot of time just to register a domain with their slow 1kb/s-bandwith server and upselling useless marketing. Now they buy a bulk of domains so as to “own” them. I don’t know how is that even legal. It’s pure monopoly.
Better purchase a domain using google domains or 1&1, you will save your time and your nerves!