Re: [ga] ICANN loses $4.6 mil

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

--- Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On the ICANN Finance Public Dashboard a note hidden within the first
> drop-down arrow on the left indicates "The large variance to budget
> is due to investment losses of $4.6 mil".  
> 
> http://forms.icann.org//idashboard/public/
> 
> One would think that a more expansive explanation would be in order.

My guess would be this is a result of the USD $25 million that ICANN
decided to put into "investments". In the annual report at:

http://www.icann.org/en/annualreport/annual-report-2008-en.pdf

Page 96 of the PDF shows that they had already gone down to $24,773,000
by the end of June 2008. Of course, the markets quickly deteriorated
further after that date. Page 98 of the PDF shows the purchase of
investments for $25 million. Pages 100 through 103 also mention the
investment policy, with Note 4 on page 103 showing the allocation
between stocks and bonds. There's no reason for ICANN to carry large
reserves, given that it taxes registrants on an ongoing basis and thus
has access to as much funds as it desires.

This is yet another area of ICANN incompetence, going outside their
"area of expertise"** to speculate in the financial markets. Of course,
no one at ICANN will be held accountable for this, although you might
want to write an article for CircleID or other venues to spread the
word to more people as to how ICANN is mismanaging the money of domain
registrants.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.leap.com/

P.S. **I use "area of expertise" in quotes, given anyone that their
major expertise is international travel and parties, rather than
anything productive.