Late last week, investor George Kirikos revealed that Delta.com had sold in July 2000 for $2,125,000, a sale that was found thanks to the revamping of the SEC’s full-text search, which allows searches of filings dating back to 2000.
George prompted other industry participants to help discover more deals (details are available on how to do that by going here), and so I found another seven-figure domain deal that confirms a 2006 acquisition.
The name in question is Banks.com, which was acquired by IRS, Inc of San Francisco in 2006 for a total of $1.3 million. These details come from an SEC filing documenting a purchase agreement between the company and the sellers, listed as two individuals from the UK.
At the time of the sale, both DomainNameWire and DNJournal covered the sale, but they were unable to state the exact price paid, although DomainNameWire came close by theorizing that the price could have been $1.2 million.
There was also speculation that the sale occurred at Afternic, but the SEC filing shows that Sedo was used as the escrow agent for the transaction.
Four years after this sale for $1.3 million, Banks.com entered into a “sale-leaseback” agreement with Domain Capital, a domain financing company. Domain Capital financed the domain for $600,000.
If DNJournal charts the 2006 sale of Banks.com, it will rank as the fourth-largest sale of that year, sitting just behind Camera.com at $1.5 million.
Today, Banks.com is operated by Simply FinTech.
I’m pretty sure that Banks.com was a publicly traded company at some point.
Yes, you’re right