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Ashley Madison Going Public: Adultery Website Plans London IPO

By Jennifer Deutschmann
Published on: 03:45 PST, Apr 16, 2015

Ashley Madison is going public. However, the Toronto-based company’s IPO will not take place in Canada. Although the adultery website is worth tens of millions, Canadian residents are hesitant to support a website the facilitates adultery. Company officials hope a London IPO will have more success.

A startling number of websites encourage cheating. However, Ashley Madison is one of the most notorious.

Ashley Madison boasts “over 22,995,000 anonymous members.” With the tagline “Life is Short… Have an Affair,” the site openly encourages married men and women to cheat on their spouse.

As reported by Business Insider, the website allows members to anonymously create a profile, which provides specific details about their sexual interests.

Despite the site’s ongoing popularity and healthy profits, Canadian investors were not impressed. In 2010, Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison, tried to go public in Toronto. However, they were unable to generate enough interest from investors.

As reported by Telegraph, Christoph Kraemer, who heads the company’s European operations, believes European residents would be more likely to invest in the controversial site.

“Europe is the only region where we have a real chance of doing an IPO… We would hope that this will be lifted at some point as we’re becoming one of the top dating sites… After all, we are another company like many others. Our ads are a lot tamer than a lot of perfume ads you see on TV.”

Kraemer confirmed Ashley Madison is going public in London, which is currently the company’s “most successful European market.” Within the last five years, more than 1.2 million UK residents have joined the website.

Ashley Madison has experienced similar success in Spain, with 1.3 million users. The controversial site is also popular in South Korea, where more than 100,000 users registered within one month.

The website is currently available to users in 46 countries worldwide. However, the service will be available to users in the Baltic states, Russia, and the Ukraine before July 1.

Officials at Ashley Madison hope going public will generate $200 million, which will be used to facilitate international expansion.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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