Ousted web quango chief defends spending £135,000 of company money on a book deal

The ousted chief of Britain's web address quango has defended spending £135,000 of company money on a book deal, promising to donate some proceeds to charity.

Russell Haworth, who resigned from UK domain name registry Nominet in early 2021, spent a six-figure sum of company money on a Forbes book publishing deal shortly before his departure.

Scheduled for release in April, the book – titled “Thoughts from the Big Chair: A Leader's Guide to Digital Transformation” – makes no mention of Nominet on its cover.

Andy Green, Nominet’s chairman, said: “The book is of no value to the Nominet of today. Given the circumstances, I am surprised that the author decided to continue with its publication."

Nominet UK oversees the market for the .uk domain names, including .co.uk and .org.uk. It was set up as a “public benefit” company in the mid-1990s and has 2,500 subscribing members.

Members - mostly companies that buy and sell internet domain names, such as GoDaddy and other businesses - have powers over the board roughly equating to those of shareholders.

Screenshots from an internal Nominet forum used by its members and seen by The Telegraph show Mr Haworth’s book has become a lightning rod for discussion about the company’s purpose and direction.

One member posted: “How did Nominet end up in a position where it was not only paying £135k for the CEO to write a book but also potentially being on the hook to purchase ‘significant quantities’ of the book?”

Mr Haworth, who was previously Nominet’s chief executive, said the book’s publication was agreed by board members as part of “marketing activity designed to raise the company’s profile and that of key people within the organisation, especially those targeting international markets”.

“Any net proceeds from the book will go to Nominet’s ‘One Million Lives’ charity partners, which gives young people access to digital skills and promotes internet safety,” he added.

A Nominet spokesman expressed surprise at Mr Haworth’s offer of donating income from the book to its nominated charity.

Mr Haworth resigned as Nominet's chief executive shortly after signing the Forbes deal in 2021 and before an extraordinary general meeting that was called to dismiss him and four other directors. Under Mr Haworth’s leadership the company began shifting away from managing domain names and towards commercial expansion into cyber security, a move opposed by some members.

It spent £4.9m buying a company in that field, CyGlass, only to divest that business for £1 last summer.

Kieren McCarthy, a long-time Nominet critic who was voted onto its board by members last year, said: “Nominet should have acknowledged that CyGlass was a flawed acquisition and should not have occurred”.

Nominet’s latest accounts, for the 12 months to March 2022, show losses of £4.4m from sales of £55m, including an £8m donation to “public benefit initiatives”. In the previous year it made a profit of £4.5m after donating £7m in similar fashion.