Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Equity firm |
Founded | 2022 |
Founder | Rocco Meliambro |
Headquarters | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
Key people |
|
Subsidiaries | Aylo |
Website | ethicalcapitalpartners |
Ethical Capital Partners is a Canadian private equity firm best known for its acquisition of Aylo, the owner of Pornhub. [1]
The company is chaired by businessman Rocco Meliambro. [2]
The company was founded in 2022 in Montreal. In March 2023, ECP acquired Aylo for an undisclosed sum. [3] The transaction occurred following a series of lawsuits against Aylo (formerly MindGeek) for hosting unlicensed or non-consensual content on its website. [4]
Grass Valley is a manufacturer of television production and broadcasting equipment. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, it was formed by the March 2014 merger of the original Grass Valley with Miranda Technologies, which were both acquired by American networking company Belden in 2014 and 2012, respectively. In February 2018, owners Belden merged Grass Valley with newly acquired Snell Advanced Media. On July 2, 2020, Grass Valley announced the completion of its acquisition by private equity firm Black Dragon Capital from Belden Inc.
Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate business has actively acquired commercial real estate across the globe. Blackstone is also active in credit, infrastructure, hedge funds, secondaries, growth equity, and insurance solutions. As of May 2024, Blackstone has more than US$1 trillion in total assets under management, making it the largest alternative investment firm globally.
Bain Capital, LP is an American private investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, with around $185 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, crypto, tech opportunities, partnership opportunities, special situations, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry sectors and geographic regions. The firm was founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company. The company is headquartered at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston with 22 offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of March 2024, the firm had raised and advised funds of approximately US$77 billion. Apax Partners is one of the oldest and largest private equity firms operating on an international basis.
CVC Capital Partners plc is a Jersey-based private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately €186 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, European, and Asian private equity, secondaries, credit funds and infrastructure. As of 31 December 2021, the funds managed or advised by CVC are invested in more than 100 companies worldwide, employing over 450,000 people in numerous countries. CVC was founded in 1981 and, as of 31 March 2022, has over 850 employees working across its network of 25 offices throughout EMEA, Asia and the Americas.
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BC Partners LLP is a British international investment firm with over $40 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit and real estate in Europe and North America. Its global headquarters are in London. The firm invests across all industries. BC Partners was founded in 1986 and has offices in New York, Paris and Hamburg. Since inception, BC Partners has completed 113 private equity investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €145 billion.
Private equity in the 2000s represents one of the major growth periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital expanded along parallel and interrelated tracks.
Francisco Partners Management, L.P., doing business as Francisco Partners, is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. It was founded in August 1999 and based in San Francisco with offices in London and New York City.
Castle Harlan is a private equity firm based in New York City. The company focuses on buyouts and growth capital investments in middle-market companies across a range of industries. Founded in 1987, Castle Harlan invests in controlling interests in middle-market companies in North America and Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia through Castle Harlan Australian Mezzanine Partners.
XVideos, stylized as XVIDEOS, is a pornographic video sharing and viewing website. Founded in Paris in 2007, the website is now registered to the Czech company WGCZ Holding. As of August 2024, it is the 25th-most-visited website in the world and the second most-visited adult website after Pornhub.
Aylo is a Canadian multinational pornographic conglomerate owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. It is primarily involved in internet pornography, operating a number of video sharing websites, and pornographic film studios such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, Men.com, Reality Kings, Sean Cody, and WhyNotBi.com, among others. Aylo's headquarters are located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, but the company's corporate structure is divided among entities domiciled in a number of other countries.
Pornhub is a Canadian-owned internet pornography video-sharing website, one of several owned by adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo. As of August 2024, Pornhub is the 16th-most-visited website in the world and the most-visited adult website.
Sycamore Partners is an American private equity firm based in New York specializing in retail and consumer investments. The firm has approximately $10 billion in aggregate committed capital.
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Feras Antoon is a Syrian-Canadian pornographer, and the co-owner and CEO of Aylo, the world's largest pornography company, which runs sites including Pornhub and RedTube. He created his first porn website in the early 2000s before co-founding Brazzers, which specialized in the MILF segment of porn distribution. He and David Tassillo later bought Manwin from Fabian Thylmann.
GirlsDoPorn was an American pornographic website active from 2009 until 2020. In October and November 2019, six people involved with the website were charged on counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. In December 2019, two more individuals were charged with obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement. The website was removed in January 2020 after 22 victims won the civil case against the company. According to the United States Department of Justice, the website and its sister website GirlsDoToys generated over $17 million in revenue. Videos were featured on GirlsDoPorn.com as well as pornography aggregate websites such as Pornhub, where the channel reached the top 20 most viewed, with approximately 680 million views.
Bernd Bergmair is an Austrian businessman. He was previously a majority owner of privately held MindGeek, the Luxembourg-based media conglomerate behind popular porn sites such as Pornhub.
Brown Rudnick is an American law firm known in the practice areas of bankruptcy, litigation, brand and reputation management, and corporate transactions.