Ashley Madison “toxic” after recent hack

The now infamous dating site Ashely Madison is facing yet another problem in the midst of their website hack as bankers says a London IPO launch is out of the question.

Bankers called the Canadian-owned company “toxic” after its data security system for more than 37 million customers was compromised.

“The doomsday scenario for Ashley Madison is if the hackers take all the names and addresses, correlates them to real people and prints addresses and phone numbers. That will kill it,” said a Canadian investment banker, who asked not to be named.

The website’s Canadian parent hoped to raise upwards of $200 million by listing its shares in London this year. An attempt that saw defeat five years ago, as interest lacked from Canadian investors.

Ashley Madison claims to be the world’s second-largest dating website, behind Match.com.

Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, values itself at $1 billion. It reported revenue of $115 million in 2014, up 45 percent from the preceding year.

“Of course they’re going to have to put any IPO plans on ice. It will be at least a few months before any banks would consider touching it,” said a second Canadian investment banker. “I don’t think this kills the company, unless all the data eventually gets leaked.”

Be social, please share!

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail