- EDP Renovaveis (EDW TH) +2.5%
- KPN Named as Top Takeover Target for 2021: M&A Desk Survey
- EDP Renovaveis Hits Record High at 20 Euros
-
Vodafone (VODI TH) +1.9%
- Business Report: Vodafone reveals plans to launch first-ever space-based network
- United Internet (UTDI TH) +1.6%
- *1&1 DRILLISCH: REVIEW SHOWS TELEFÓNICA PRICE RAISE UNJUSTIFIED
- Glaxo (GS7 TH) +1.4%
- Enel (ENL TH) +0.8%
-
BP (BPE5 TH) +0.8%
- BP Offers Abu Dhabi’s Murban Crude for Feb. at -30C/Bbl on Rim
- Prosus (1TY TH) -1.1%
- ING (INN1 TH) -1.2%
- BNP Paribas (BNP TH) -1.2%
- LVMH (MOH TH) -1.3%
- Flutter Entertaiment (PPB TH) -1.3%
- BBVA (BOY TH) -1.9%
- CD Projekt (7CD TH) -7.7%
- Sony Pulls Cyberpunk From PlayStation Store After Outcry
US property group Tishman Speyer calls the bottom in Paris
Owner of New York’s Rockefeller Center makes €750m bet on demand for offices in the French capital
US property investor Tishman Speyer has ploughed more than €750m into Paris office buildings in recent weeks, betting that the French capital will still be a magnet for companies after the pandemic.
The investment by the group, whose almost $100bn portfolio includes New York’s Rockefeller Center, comes as Covid-19 cases continue to climb in France and the government urges people to avoid commuting into offices.
Many property investors have held back this year amid concern the practice of working from home, ushered in by coronavirus, will permanently reduce the value of city office buildings.
But Rob Speyer, Tishman’s chief executive, said he was confident that employees would return to offices at the nearest opportunity.
“It’s a consistent theme among CEOs that people want to come back . . . As it gets colder, people are feeling lonely. They’re feeling isolated,” he said.
Tishman began scouting the three office buildings in August, but only completed the deals in the last six weeks.
“In August, in Paris, there was not much competition,” said Mr Speyer. “It requires a team on the ground . . . You can’t invest €750m in real estate over Zoom.”
Two of the buildings are in central Paris: one a high-rise on the banks of the Seine in the 15th Arrondissement; the other a mixed-use property on Boulevard Saint-Germain, sold by AXA IM. The third is in Boulogne to the south-west of Paris and for many years headquarters of media group Canal+.
However, Tishman anticipates having to weather a few difficult years, forecasting vacancy rates in Paris will climb to 4.6 per cent by 2021, from 2.2 per cent last year.
“To tell you the truth, we’re not expecting any rental growth in Paris over the next two years. And in some cases we’ve even anticipated . . . rents moving down,” said Bernard Pernaud, who heads Tishman’s European business. “The properties we bought do not have any kind of real leasing exposure before three to four years.”
The Paris office market has been in the doldrums this year. Office transactions in the capital slumped by 46 per cent in the first nine months, according to real estate group Colliers, which said the “property market is being hit hard by the wait-and-see attitude of companies.”
Tishman estimates that the discount on the building in Boulogne was as steep as 25 per cent from prices prevailing before the pandemic.
Mr Pernaud said Tishman was considering investing in other cities where prices had fallen, but that London was not yet on its radar. “We didn’t buy in London because the discount is not there yet”, he said.
The company looks for returns of between 7 and 13 per cent, depending on which fund is buying. “That equation is working in Paris, it’s a little too high in London, said Mr Pernaud. “That's not magic. It's really financial analysis . . . But I think London is adjusting little by little.”
Although Tishman recognises that there might be more remote working in the future, it argues that fast-expanding sectors such as tech, which care more about location than price, will offer support for prime rents in big cities.
DAX:
- No major movers
MDAX:
- Metro AG (B4B TH) +1.6%
- NOTE: Shares up 15% so far this week
- HelloFresh (HFG TH) +1.2%
- Airbus (AIR TH) +0.9%
- Commerzbank (CBK TH) -0.8%
- K+S (SDF TH) -0.9%
SDAX:
- 1&1 Drillisch (DRI TH) +2.5%
- Statement: 1&1 Drillisch AG: Final expert opinion considers price increase claimed by Telefónica in December 2018 in the reviewed period to be unjustified
- Borussia Dortmund (BVB TH) +1.3%
- CropEnergies (CE2 TH) +1.2%
- DIC Asset (DIC TH) +1.2%
- DIC Asset Buys Three German Real Estate Objects for EU179M
- Suedzucker (SZU TH) +1.2%
- Tele Columbus (TC1 TH) -1.9%
>>> Up
* Cewe Stiftung Raised to Buy at FMR Frankfurt Main; PT 107 euros
* DSV Panalpina Raised to Buy at ABG; PT 1,180 kroner
* EDP Raised to Add at AlphaValue
* EVN Raised to Overweight at Barclays; PT 20 euros
* Randstad Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 60 euros
* Sika Raised to Add at Baader Helvea; PT 253 Swiss francs
* Smith & Nephew ADRs Raised to Outperform at Bernstein; PT $46.50
* Smith & Nephew Raised to Outperform at Bernstein; PT 1,750 pence
* Zehnder PT Raised to 57 Swiss francs at Bank Vontobel
>>> Down
* Aegon Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse; PT 3.30 euros
* Chr. Hansen Cut to Hold at Carnegie; PT 670 kroner
* Cyan Cut to Hold at Berenberg; PT 15 euros
* Enagas Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan; PT 17.70 euros
* Petrofac Cut to Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 230 pence
>>> Initiation
* Royal Unibrew Reinstated Buy at Carnegie; PT 715 kroner
* Tamburi Investment Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 8.10 euros
>>> Call
* Morgan Stanley Raises European Energy Sector, Cuts Utilities
* QinetiQ Shares Deserve a Higher Rating, Berenberg Says
* Sika Trading May Prove Better Than Expected, Baader Upgrades
Most Asian stocks fell with U.S. and European futures Friday amid fresh U.S.-China tensions and as lawmakers continued to wrangle over a federal-spending deal in Washington. The dollar pushed higher.
Shares fell across much of Asia Pacific on volumes below the recent average. Sentiment took a hit after Reuters reported the U.S. is set to blacklist dozens of Chinese firms. S&P 500 futures pulled back after the index closed at a record high. A bipartisan U.S. stimulus deal “appears to be close at hand,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, but will probably require work over the weekend to get through Congress. Investors earlier took an unexpectedly large rise in jobless claims as a sign the two sides would be prodded toward an agreement. Treasury yields ticked lower.
Elsewhere, the yen retreated as the Bank of Japan maintained its main policy settings and extended its virus program by six months, saying it will take more action without hesitation if required. Oil edged back from the highest level since February. Bitcoin breached $23,000 for the first time. The pound fell as both sides in the Brexit negotiations played down expectations a deal will be reached.
US After Hours MRNA -1.5% trades slightly lower but got FDA panel thumbs up; FDX -3.3%, BB -2.8% trade lower despite earnings beats
Nikkei -0.19% Hang Seng -0.94% CSI -0.38% Shanghai -0.29% Shenzen -0.29%
Eur$ 1.2245 CNH 6.5305 CNY 6.5439 JPY 103.40 GBP 1.3530 CHF 0.8847 RUB 73.2120 TRY 7.7245 WTI$ 48.17 -0.39%
S&P -0.14% Nasdaq -0.18% EuroStoxx -0.28% FTSE -0.22% Dax -0.31% SMI -0.25%
Macro :
- EU Says Big Differences Remain on Brexit, Particularly on Fish
- Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase Says It’s Filed to Go Public
- Fund Flows to Stocks Surge With U.S. Most-Favored, Citi Says
Keep an eye on :
- AED BB : Aedifica Buys 13 Health Care Sites in Finland, NL for >EU100M
- AKERBP NO : Aker BP to Develop 13m BOE Grasel Discovery in 2021
- ATL IM : Atlantia Aims to Expand Further Into Europe Airport Sector: FT
- BMPS IM : Paschi to Raise as Much as $3.1 Billion to Meet Capital Needs
- DAI GY : Mercedes-Benz to Discontinue Car Production in Brazil
- DASH US : DoorDash Sinks After Citron Calls IPO ‘Most Ridiculous’ of 2020
- DIC GY : DIC Asset Buys Three German Real Estate Objects for EU179M
- ENEL IM : Enel Agrees to Sell Stake in Italy’s Open Fiber to Macquarie
- EL FP : EssilorLuxottica: Francesco Milleri Named as CEO
- HIK LN : Hikma Pharma Gets FDA Approval for Advair Diskus Generic
- IAG LN : Iberia Agrees to Buy Air Europa for EU500m: Confidencial
- IBE SM : Iberdrola Enters Polish Market With 50% Acquisition of Sea Wind
- KER FP : Gucci to Join Alibaba’s Luxury E-commerce Platform in China
- KPN NA : KPN Named as Top Takeover Target for 2021: M&A Desk Survey
- METSB FH : Metsa Fibre’s Kemi Pulp, Bioproduct Mill Gets Environment Permit
- ML FP : China Car OEM Tire Nov. Demand Up 7%: Michelin
- NXI FP : Nexity Confirms Group’s 2020 and 2021 Guidance
- NDA SS : Nordea to Close Its Bank in Russia
- OMV AV : OMV to Quit Two Offshore N.Z. Exploration Permits: BusinessDesk
- SPM IM : Italy’s CDP May Be Studying Options to Raise Saipem Stake: Sole
- SIE GY : Siemens Is Said to Explore Fresh Attempt to Sell Logistics Unit
- SIE GY : Siemens Sees Train Boom From Climate-Conscious Spending on Rail
- S30 FP : Solutions 30 Says Comgest Boosts Stake to 5.5%
- TCM LN : U-Blox Stays Committed to Progress Toward Possible Telit Offer
- URW NA : Tiger Global Management Boosts Short Position in Unibail
- DG FP : Vinci CEO Tenders Company’s Resignation From ADP Board
- VIV FP : Vivendi: Tencent-Led Group Buys Extra 10% of UMG Share Capital
- VOW GY : Volkswagen Plans to Link Top Executives’ Bonuses to ESG Targets
- WIE AV : Wienerberger Boosts U.S. Brick Business With $250 Million Deal
After Hours Summary: MRNA -1.5% trades slightly lower but got FDA panel thumbs up; FDX -3.3%, BB -2.8% trade lower despite earnings beatsAfter Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: None
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: MREO +35.7% (MREO and RARE announce collaboration and license agreement for setrusumab), DMTK +25% (announces positive results of TRUST Study), BW +8.8% (thermal segment books new projects), MNKD +5% (announces co-promotion agreement for Thyquidity), TWO +1.9% (increases dividend), PRSP +1.6% (awarded $800 mln Navy contract), AR +1.4% (S&P outlook revised to stable from negative), MODN +0.8% (to acquire Deloitte's life sciences pricing and contracting solutions business), CSCO +0.3% (COO steps down), WMB +0.2% (announces bankruptcy court approval for resolution reached with Chesapeake), FLGT +0.2% (PRAH enhances COVID-19 monitoring program via collaboration with FLGT and PWNHealth), HON +0.2% (awarded $1.1 bln Army contract), JBGS +0.1% (new CFO), ALEX +0.1% (reinstates dividend), SWI +0.1% (provides update on cyber attack), ABT +0.1% (FDA expands labeling for HeartMate 3 Heart Pump for use in pediatric patients), RTX +0.1% (awarded $610 mln Air Force contract)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: SCHL -12.7%, SCS -7.7%, X -6% (guides Q4 EPS and EBITDA below consensus), AIR -4.7%, FDX -3.3%, BB -2.8%
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: MESO -29.3% (provides update on COVID-19 ARDS trial), EGLE -5.8% (stock offering), ASUR -5.3% (stock offering), UPS -2% (in sympathy with FDX earnings report), MRNA -1.5% (confirms receipt of FDA Advisory Committee vote supporting EUA for mRNA-1273), VIR -1.2% (VIR and GSK start of trial evaluating VIR-7831 in hospitalized adults with COVID-19), GLUU -0.3% (files patent infringement lawsuit), AA -0.2% (will halt curtailment plans for smelter in Spain), AMGN -0.1% (receives FDA approval for RIABNI), SNV -0.1% (new CEO), TGI -0.1% (files for mixed securities shelf offering)
Closing Stock Market SummaryEach of the major indices closed at record highs on Thursday, as the market continued to ride its positive trend in a relatively calm session. The Russell 2000 rose 1.3% and extended its recent outperformance over the S&P 500 (+0.6%), Nasdaq Composite (+0.8%), and Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.5%).
Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished in positive territory with real estate (+1.2%), materials (+1.2%), and health care (+1.1%) taking the top spots today. The energy (-0.6%) and communication services (-0.3%) sectors were the lone holdouts, with the latter pressured by weakness in AT&T (T 29.62, -0.68, -2.2%) following an analyst downgrade at Morgan Stanley.
Yesterday's affirmation of the Fed's highly-accommodative monetary policy had a lingering effect on market action today. Namely, investors felt emboldened to overlook relatively disappointing weekly initial claims data while the U.S. Dollar Index (89.82, -0.63, -0.7%) fell to its lowest level since April 2018.
The weaker dollar contributed to decent performances in foreign equities, oil prices ($48.33/bbl, +$0.50, +1.1%), and precious metals, although energy stocks evidently did not rise with the higher oil prices.
In the homebuilding space, stocks benefited from better-than-expected housing starts and building permits data for November, which featured a 27.1% yr/yr increase in single-family starts, and positive earnings results and encouraging guidance from Lennar (LEN 79.95, +5.66, +7.6%). The iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB 57.78, +2.17, +3.9%) increased 4%.
U.S. Treasuries edged lower in a relatively uneven session, as investors contemplated a 23,000 increase in weekly initial claims to 885,000 (Briefing.com consensus 795,000) and the incoming new supply of Treasuries needed to finance a potential stimulus bill. The 2-yr yield increased one basis point to 0.13%, and the 10-yr yield increased one basis point to 0.93%.
Reviewing Thursday's economic data:
- Initial claims for the week ending December 12 increased by 23,000 to 885,000 ( consensus 795,000). Continuing claims for the week ending December 5 decreased by 273,000 to 5.508 million, which was the lowest level since March.
- The key takeaway from the report is that the jump in initial claims underscores the real, and adverse, economic impact of the latest surge in coronavirus cases and the business restrictions imposed to help contain the spread.
- Housing starts increased 1.2% m/m in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.547 million (consensus 1.530 million). Building permits increased 6.2% m/m to 1.639 million ( consensus 1.550 million).
- The key takeaway from the report is that the starts and permits growth was driven largely by multi-unit dwellings; however, single-unit starts and permits were up 0.4% and 0.9%, respectively, which belies robust year-over-year growth of 27.1% and 22.2%.
- The Philadelphia Fed Index dropped to 11.1 in December (Briefing.com consensus 19.0) from 26.3 in November.
Looking ahead, investors will receive the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index for November and the Q3 Current Account Balance.
- Nasdaq Composite +42.3% YTD
- Russell 2000 +18.6% YTD
- S&P 500 +15.2% YTD
- Dow Jones Industrial Average +6.2% YTD
MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube
In the internet era, porn is everywhere but the company which owns some of the most popular sites is out of sight
Mario Salieri was shooting a pornographic movie in a lavish Prague villa two decades ago when he first caught sight of the computer geeks who were about to upend his industry.
“The owner of the villa asked me if we could offer a sandwich to a young computer programmer who had been renting a room,” says Mr Salieri. “The boy was pale and visibly hungry.”
A few years later, Mr Salieri discovered that “the boy” had bought his first Rolls-Royce Phantom. Like other coders, he had made a fortune selling advertising on the early free-to-watch porn sites, which today attract hundreds of millions of visits every day.
Once run by silk-robed moguls such as Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the adult content industry is now led by a secretive group of experts on algorithms, search engine optimisation and targeted advertising. “All of us old operators in the porn industry were busy counting our millions generated with the sales of VHS, DVD and TV rights . . . no one ever bet on the danger [of the new generation of pornographers],” says Mr Salieri.
In the internet era, porn is everywhere, but its owners are out of sight.
Porn pioneered elements of the global online advertising industry such as targeted advertising, pay-per-click and email marketing and is today a substantial part of the internet economy. So-called “tube” sites have also courted controversy over videos with links to exploitation of children and sex trafficking.
Yet very little is known about the new group of operators whose pockets are being lined by the insatiable demand for sexually arousing footage.
No entity exemplifies this more than MindGeek, which with very little scrutiny or accountability, has quietly become the dominant porn company. The Montreal-based business is the owner of several of the sector’s most visited sites including Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn. At least according to public financial records, MindGeek towers over the pornography industry in Europe and America.
Despite this, basic facts about the company are largely unknown. That includes its main owner — a businessman called Bernard Bergemar, whose name is almost completely invisible on the internet but who has a claim to the title of the world’s most successful porn tycoon. Until this Financial Times investigation, his identity was secret, known only to a small circle of MindGeek executives and their advisers.
MindGeek’s website bears little trace of the adult industry. Instead, the company bills itself as a “leader in the design, development . . . and management of highly trafficked websites”.
High traffic is an understatement. The Luxembourg-registered group, which in 2018 recorded just over $460m in revenues, entices more than 115m visitors to its websites every day. In the US over the past month, for example, more web searches were recorded for “Pornhub” than “coronavirus” or “Trump”, according to Google data.
Prospective MindGeek employees are told they will be able to take “big data to the next level”, uncovering “user habits overnight that take others months to gather”. Every day, roughly 15 terabytes worth of videos get uploaded to MindGeek’s sites, equivalent to roughly half of the content available to watch on Netflix.
In recent years, the largest internet companies have become both household names and the subject of intense political scrutiny. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is regularly asked to testify before Congress, while YouTube’s content policies are an issue of widespread public debate.
Online porn has not been completely immune to the sort of political and regulatory pressure that the big tech companies have started to face. After years of campaigns against revenge porn — sexual footage taken or shared without consent that often identifies the victim — and other forms of exploitation, Pornhub agreed on Monday to temporarily take down all content from unverified sources, while it rolls out a new scheme to verify users. There have long been stringent laws governing child pornography.
But even though it has reshaped an industry that is responsible for a significant part of the traffic on the internet, MindGeek and entrepreneurs such as Mr Bergemar have remained largely in the shadows. MindGeek’s early lenders — including Wall Street names such as JPMorgan — made sure to also hide from view. And regulators have steered clear of asking too many questions.
“No politician wants to talk about the porn industry because then they have to acknowledge how it is part of everyday life,” says Kate Isaacs at Not Your Porn, which campaigns against the use of sexual images without consent. “So no one is holding a multinational corporation like MindGeek to account.”
Free content
MindGeek’s business model will be all too familiar to those who have watched the disruptive power of Silicon Valley. Most of the pornography hosted by its free-to-watch sites is uploaded directly by the public. Much like Facebook’s huge reach convinces news publishers to promote stories on its platform — with the hope it will drive subscriptions — many porn production studios post snippets of their films on to MindGeek’s sites, hoping that some viewers will want to pay for more.
But a vast amount of pornography available on free-to-watch tube sites is stolen. Jason Tucker, president of copyright enforcement consultancy Battleship Stance, says porn is the most pirated content in the world simply because “it is the most desired content in the world”.
Mr Tucker, who has worked with online porn companies since the late 1990s and counts MindGeek as a client, says large and well-established porn sites such as Pornhub are “the most responsible . . . they have too much risk not to adhere to laws”.
Other people in the industry disagree and single out MindGeek as driving the free porn business model, which has squeezed profit margins for producers, squashed smaller companies and pushed down pay and working conditions for a growing number of actors.
“They came into the market with a business model based on piracy and completely destroyed the industry, putting many production studios and performers out of business,” says Erika Lust, a Barcelona-based adult film producer. She says her team sends MindGeek requests to remove her videos — both US and EU regulation mandate copyright holders to monitor whether their material is shared illegally — from their sites “weekly, if not daily”.
MindGeek says it has processes in place to detect and remove videos that violate other companies’ copyright or feature child pornography and other illegal content.
The company’s assurances are, however, questioned by campaigners such as Ms Isaacs, who was last year told by a Pornhub representative that the site had a “couple of dozen” people screening the vast amount of porn uploaded to the site.
MindGeek says the number cited to Ms Isaacs was “inaccurate” but declined to provide a figure. YouTube has roughly 10,000 people who work with moderating content uploaded to its pages.
Knowing users’ fantasies
The man who defined the new era of porn was Fabian Thylmann. As a teenager in Germany in the late 1990s, he developed one of the first pieces of software that enabled website owners to charge for advertisements by tracking what visitors clicked on. It offered a glimpse of how lucrative online marketing could be if only there was something to attract crowds — such as free videos of people having sex.
With money made from his first venture, Mr Thylmann, began snapping up fledgling porn sites and production companies, which were struggling to compete with free sites full of videos ripped off from them. His stroke of luck came when he learnt that the Montreal-based groups behind Pornhub and Brazzers — which in 2010 were already profitable businesses and well-known brands — were up for sale.
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As a result of the deal, worth more than $130m, Mr Thylmann was desperate for cash to expand his porn empire, then called Manwin. Mr Thylmann did not respond to requests for comment but in 2016 told attendees at a start-up conference that venture capitalists had been wary, telling him “the numbers look great, but it is porn, so I can’t get this past my board”.
The solution came in 2011, in the form of $362m in debt from 125 secret investors that — according to one financial backer — included Fortress Investment Group, JPMorgan Chase and Cornell University. The two firms declined to comment, while the university said that its investment managers’ portfolios are confidential.
Mr Thylmann told the conference-goers that interest payments were “a very very steep cost, which if I will tell you, you would all fall over and think I’m crazy”. But “a very nice [profit] margin of 25 per cent” made the dizzying cost of growth worth paying.
The funding helped the software developer expand from 200 to 1,200 staff within three years, with dozens of corporate offshoots stretching from Montreal and Luxembourg to Ireland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.
His run as one of the world’s most powerful people in porn came to an abrupt end in late 2012 when German public prosecutors charged him with tax evasion. Soon after, he sold the company to senior managers Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, who renamed the company MindGeek and now run it out of Montreal. They both declined to comment for this article.
Detailed data tracking the sexual fantasies of hundreds of millions of people direct what MindGeek orders production studios to shoot for their subscription pages, which are then promoted on the company’s vast network of tube sites to tap into their massive audience. If the “free” product flops, audiences for premium products grow and vice versa, leaving MindGeek profiting either way in what Mr Thylmann called “in-house competition”.
“This is why MindGeek is one of the most powerful ones in the business, because they have these free sites and they have all the traffic and they don’t need to depend on anyone else,” he said in 2016.
Yet, until its most recent accounts in 2018, MindGeek had made only modest profits. Pre-tax profit reached $38.3m in 2018, up from $9.7m in 2017 and $26m the year before, with net revenues hovering just under $500m.
The legacy of Mr Thylmann’s deal with lenders is one potential explanation for the modest profits, with MindGeek’s accounts showing it has for years paid an annual 20.4 per cent interest rate on outstanding debt that in 2018 reached $370m.
But money is also funnelled into a complex network of subsidiaries that MindGeek owns less than a third of and in which Mr Bergemar holds a significant set of shares, according to a person close to the company. These corporate branches, which control a network of companies to which MindGeek pays licence fees for its various brands and issue dividends to their undisclosed owners, were set up shortly after the porn company swapped hands in 2013.
MindGeek owes one of these subsidiaries $200m in debt issued when Mr Bergemar entered the business, which is paid in monthly instalments that range from $1.5m to $1.8m, some years eclipsing declared profits. Another subsidiary, which in 2018 paid shareholders $24m in dividends, increased its stake in two cash-generating companies that hold MindGeek’s licences shortly after the refinancing of MindGeek’s debt the same year, at a cost of $149m.
Mr Bergemar does not feature in the porn company’s corporate filings and declined to speak to the FT. But several sources confirmed that, through a complex structure involving shares in MindGeek-controlled subsidiaries, Mr Bergemar is the group’s largest owner and biggest beneficiary.
MindGeek would not comment on who currently owns its debt, but a former investor says one of the company’s bigger backers was California-based investment adviser Glendon Capital, which focuses on “distressed opportunities”. Glendon declined to comment, but a person close to the firm said it had sold its position.
The opaqueness surrounding the company’s financing also covers management — the names of many of the company’s senior executives who feature in corporate filings do not appear in internet searches, leaving little or no trace of who they are. Mr Bergemar appears on three Google results, all related to a decade-old court case where he gave evidence as the director of RedTube, the porn site MindGeek acquired soon after Mr Thylmann’s exit.
Previous media reports have stated that Mr Tassillo and Mr Antoon bought the company from Mr Thylmann in 2013, and their names are — aside from anonymous family trusts and shell companies — the only ones listed as owning shares in MindGeek.
Industry frontrunner
MindGeek denies being the world’s largest porn company, a position that would justify growing scrutiny into its business, and points to rival WGCZ Holding, a Czech-registered company behind tube sites Xvideos and Xnxx that is owned by two French citizens who share a surname.
But internally, the company is less modest, say former employees. “Pornhub is the adult site with the most traffic on the planet, that’s the pitch we were making to clients,” says one former employee, who handled client accounts at MindGeek’s advertising network TrafficJunky. “They were making more money than anyone else [in the industry].”
Bandwidth data by network firm Sandvine confirms that Pornhub is the world’s most popular adult site. Rival Xvideos comes close, but MindGeek controls an entire network of related businesses, with arms such as TrafficJunky and age verification service AgeID strengthening its arsenal of top-ranking tube sites and subscription platforms.
To critics, the taboo of sex has allowed MindGeek and other distributors to fall under the radar of regulators.
While Google-owned YouTube has been dragged in front of politicians for failing to spot and remove copyrighted videos or outright illegal content of people getting harmed, criticism of MindGeek and other tube sites has been muted.
“YouTube is a lot more visible and more conscious of reputational damage,” says Lorna Woods, an internet law professor at the University of Essex.
Ms Woods, who drafted key parts of the proposal for the UK’s online harms bill, says that until this spring she had not paid much attention to MindGeek “which is interesting given the amount of research I have been doing in the field".
If MindGeek has benefited from a low profile, it continually finds itself fighting smaller companies that are trying to beat it at its own game.
MindGeek frequently takes smaller players to court for failing to take down pirated content, often using a Cyprus-registered subsidiary that has sent over 213m requests to Google, demanding it delists illegally shared content.
In one of its most recent lawsuits, filed at a Washington district court last February, MindGeek accused two smaller porn sites of “blatant infringement” of its copyright, stating it was “causing serious harm” to its business and “must be put to a stop immediately”. MindGeek, however, declared that it could not locate the owners of the websites it was trying to take down.
Ms Lust says the industry has acquired a reputation as “secretive and seedy”, with many sites providing no contact information other than an anonymous post box.
“These are the people who have the power to decide what we, and most importantly, our children can find online,” she says. “We need to know who is controlling the type of sex that we are being fed.”