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Minutes for the 10 February 2009 Board Finance Committee (BFC) meeting

BFC members: Raimundo Beca, Steve Crocker, Dennis Jennings, and Rajasekhar Ramaraj (Chair).

Staff members present: Doug Brent, Kevin Wilson, Kurt Pritz, Diane Schroeder, and Dan Halloran.

The following is a summary of discussion, actions taken and actions identified:

• Approved previous BFC meeting minutes
• Received update and refresher on ICANN reserve fund; CFO gave history of development and adoption of investment policy; presentation to come in Mexico City from UBS on performance and compliance with policy; BFC will get input from advisers in Mexico and then make a recommendation after that; CFO reports that US$25mm was invested in November 2007, plus $8mm in August 2008, and current value is at $28mm -- approximately a 14% loss.
• Received and discussed update on YTD budget performance and revenue numbers. Actual YTD revenue through December is close to budget. Given global economic markets, BFC requested staff to study revenue projections further for possible impacts on FY09 forecasts as well as on the FY10 revenue budget.
• Discussed response to comments on new gTLDs; as discussed last month will keep Evaluation fee at $185k; will reduce annual registry fee from $75k to $25k; remove 5% of revenue and change to flat $0.25 per transaction after 50k transactions; Refunds set at 70%, 35%, and 20%.
• Discussed timetable for FY2010 Budget and status and plans for ccTLD contributions.
• Discussed estimate of new gTLD application numbers, and clarified that the separate budget will have a flexible component to account for a variable number of applications.
• Discussed budget increases in personnel are largely due to run rate (new hires in FY09 work for 12 full months in FY10); the big part of the increase is the new gTLD increase; and some for other significant programs.
• Approved recommendation for Board to adopt the international currency risk management policy.