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Latest ICANN salary porn ruins my terrible pun

Kevin Murphy, March 27, 2025, Domain Policy

I’d always planned, if it turned out ICANN’s former interim CEO Sally Costerton was getting paid an absolutely, ridiculously, eye-popping pay packet, that it might be amusing to try to pin the nickname “Cost-a-tonne” on her.

Thanks. I’m here all week. Try the turbot.

But she wasn’t even ICANN’s highest-compensated employee last year, according to the Org’s latest tax return, which it published yesterday. That privilege went to general counsel John Jeffrey.

While her immediate predecessor Goran Marby made over a million bucks in his final years, Costerton made a more modest $835,585, compared to Jeffrey’s $837,137, the return states.

It’s the first time Costerton’s compensation has been disclosed. Previously, she was paid through her consulting company.

The form 990 (pdf) lists the 20 employees who get paid the most, with total compensation starting at $217,073. The top 10 employees received over half a million dollars in total compensation.

Some former ICANN staffers have recently said publicly that the figures in the 990 might give a misleading impression of how well rank-and-file employees are compensated.

On the corporate side, it was a relatively poor year for Jones Day, ICANN’s incumbent law firm and highest-paid contractor, which billed $3,617,243 compared to the $4,606,859 in the previous year. It was getting closer to $9 million a year not too long ago.

The top five contractors saw a new entrant at five, with HR firm ADO Professional Solutions getting $980,970 for recruitment services.

ICANN salary porn: 2021 edition

Kevin Murphy, May 3, 2022, Domain Policy

It’s that time of year again when ICANN publishes its tax returns and we all get to ogle the phat paychecks its top brass are cutting themselves with domain registrants’ money.

Headlining, CEO Göran Marby actually got paid a bit less in fiscal 2021, which ended last June, than he did the previous year — $908,674, plus another $68,866 from “other” sources.

That total of $977,540 is lower than the total of $1,059,222 he received in fiscal 2020, largely due to receiving about $94,000 less in bonus payments.

Marby was given a 5% pay raise in February 2021, though not without some director dissent.

The Form 990 goes on to disclose the salaries of 35 ICANN management and directors, showing that 19 of them make over $300,00 a year. Five, including Marby, receive over half a million dollars.

Directors, if they choose to draw a salary, take home a flat $45,000, which is sometimes paid to their companies instead. Chair Maarten Botterman had $75,000 paid to his consulting company.

The filing reveals that VP Cyrus Namazi, who left the Org during the period after attracting sexual harassment complaints from at least two female colleagues, was given a $375,000 golden parachute.

And former COO Susanna Bennett was given $380,380 in severance payments, despite the fact that her departure was originally described by Marby as her own voluntary decision.

Law firm Jones Day was the best-paid contractor, billing $8,769,608 in the year. That was up from $5,513,028 in the previous year.

Software developers Architect, Zensar and OSTechnical received $2,769,856, $1,396,232 and $1,093,070 respectively, presumably for work on the ICANN web site.

ICANN’s revenue for the year was $163,942,482, of which $97.5 million came from registrars and registries.

The Org had $555,804,201 in assets at the end of the year.

You can download the forms here.

Time for some more ICANN salary porn

Kevin Murphy, June 3, 2019, Domain Policy

ICANN has filed its tax return for its fiscal 2018, so it’s once again that time of the year in which the community gets to salivate over how much its top staffers get paid.
The latest form 990, covering the 12 months to June 30, 2018, shows that the top 21 ICANN employees were compensated to the tune of $10.3 million, an average of $492,718 each.
That’s up about 4% from $9.9 million in the previous year, an average across the top 21 staffers of $474,396 apiece.
These numbers include base salary, bonuses, and benefits such as pension contributions.
Employee compensation overall increased from $60 million to $73.1 million.
The biggest earner was of course CEO Göran Marby, who is now earning more than his immediate predecessor Fadi Chehadé but a bit less than last-but-one boss Rod Beckstrom.
Marby’s total compensation was $936,585, having received a bonus of almost $200,000 during the year. His base salary was $673,133.
The number of staffers receiving six-figure salaries increased from 159 in fiscal 2017 to 183 — about 44% of its estimated end-of-year headcount.
Towards the end of the reported year, as ICANN faced a budget crunch, many members of the ICANN community had called on the organization to rein in its spending on staff.
ICANN says it targets compensation in the 50th to 75th percentile range for the relevant industry.
The top five outside contractors in the year were:

  • Jones Day, ICANN’s go-to law firm. It received $5.4 million, down from $8.7 million in 2017.
  • Zensar Technologies, the IT consultancy that develops and supports ICANN software. It received $3.7 million.
  • IIS, the Swedish ccTLD registry, which does pre-delegation testing for new gTLDs. It received $1.3 million.
  • Iron Mountain, the data escrow provider. It received $1.1 million.
  • Infovity, which provides Oracle software support. It received $1 million.

The return shows that ICANN made a loss of $23.9 million in the year, on revenue that was down from $302.6 million to $136.7 million.
The primary reason for this massive decrease in revenue was the $135 million Verisign paid for the rights to run .web, at an ICANN last-resort auction, in ICANN’s fiscal 2017.
The tax form for 2018 can be found here (pdf) and 2017’s can be found here (pdf).