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Fire the board! Registrars attempt a coup at Nominet

Kevin Murphy, February 3, 2021, 10:18:56 (UTC), Domain Registries

The registrars are revolting — again — at Nominet.

Members representing 12.2% of the .uk registry’s voting rights have put their names to a call for five of the company’s unelected directors, including CEO Russell Haworth, to be fired and replaced with two hand-picked alternatives.

The plan is to shake up the company by slashing wholesale .uk prices and donating more money to worthy “public benefit” causes.

Nominet has warned in response that such a move would be “highly disruptive to our work and our team”.

The campaign, which can be found at PublicBenefit.uk, was kicked off by the registrar Krystal Hosting, which has about 45,000 .uk domains under management.

Signatories want to call an Extraordinary General Meeting that would vote on kicking out Haworth, along with chair Mark Wood, registry managing director Eleanor Bradley and directors Benjamin Hill and Jane Tozer.

Four elected non-exec directors and two non-elected directors would remain.

A second resolution would replace these directors with former BBC Trust chair Sir Michael Lyons and former RIPE NCC managing director Axel Pawlik, who have both confirmed their interest in the positions. Lyons would be chair.

Only 5% of Nominet’s voting rights — calculated largely from how many domains each member manages — are needed to call an EGM. At 12.2%, the campaign has already succeeded in passing that threshold. It would need 50%+1 of those attending the EGM to actually carry the resolutions.

The campaign claims that Nominet has gone downhill ever since Haworth was appoint five years ago.

It claims that the amount of money Nominet donates to “public benefit” causes has shrunk from £26 million ($35.5 million) in the preceding five years to £9.8 million in the five years since. That’s even while its wholesale prices for .uk domains increased 50% from £2.50 to £3.75 a year.

Director pay has gone up by 70% over the same period, it claims.

The registry also stands accused of frittering away money on acquisitions and pointless diversification into non-core businesses. Krystal founder Simon Blackler wrote:

This is not a VC-backed Silicon Valley startup that needs to take risks, make speculative acquisitions, “pivot” or worry about unnecessary diversifications. This is Nominet, the guardian of the .UK namespace and we’d like it back, please.

A second — and arguably more-important, if you’re a cynic — goal is to get the price of .uk domains to come down. This would reduce the carrying cost of portfolios held for resale by some Nominet members.

In response, Haworth has blogged that “an EGM and change of board at this time would be highly destabilising to Nominet and disrupt a range of fantastic programmes that are currently underway or planned”. He wrote:

I understand that there are frustrations and disagreements about how we run the business, and we are open to looking at those and making any adjustments that are in the interests of the company and the wider stakeholder community we serve. More on that to come.

The company has just approved a pricey multi-year investment in improving the registry infrastructure, he wrote.

The board has also approved a new Registry Advisory Council, which would be made up of members and have the ability to make recommendations on pricing, which could address concerns that Nominet has not been especially responsive to its members, he wrote.

Nominet came under fire last year when it unilaterally closed down the discussion forums on its web site, announcing and executing the move during its Annual General Meeting, saying posters had become “increasingly aggressive and hostile” towards Nominet staff.

At time of writing, 153 Nominet members, including four of the top 20 by .uk domain volume, have signed up to the campaign.

UPDATE: This article was updated 1248 UTC to correct the composition of the board and voting thresholds.

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Comments (1)

  1. Netizen2021 says:
    February 3, 2021 at 10:56 am

    The position regarding voting rights is more nuanced than described above. A vote 5% of total voting rights of all members is required to call the EGM, but a vote of more than 50% of those that actually attend the EGM by reference to their voting rights is required. If there is a gap, it’s not between 12.2% and 50+%

    Reply

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