When Australia's Freelancer.com announced the acquisition of Escrow.com last spring many were relieved to hear the new owners were leaving staff and management at the highly regarded California based company in place. Unfortunately, as DomainInvesting.com reported this morning, that changed with surprising word that Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey had left the company after 11 years on the job (more than a decade marked by steady growth).

Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie told DomainInvesting's Elliot Silver, "Brandon has been running the business for a long period of time and is well known for doing a good job. However we think the potential for Escrow.com is much bigger. We’re moving to up the tempo of the business and run it as a high growth technology company.” Abbey hasn't yet publicly commented on the change. 

Barrie also told Silver he already has a new management team for Escrow.com in place that will be run by Product Manager Jackson Elsegood (who will report to Freelancer's Senior Director of Growth, Michael Kot). The revamped Escrow.com team will still have some familiar and welcome faces to those in the domain industry. Keith Gettle will stay in the California office and move up to Operations Manager, Mauli Fry

Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie (left) with Escrow,com President Brandon Abbey after Freelancer announced acquisition of Escrow.com last April.

has been promoted to Partnership Manager and Sandra Gordon will stay on as one of the company's top Escrow Managers.

That continuity is certainly a good thing but it is hard to imagine Escrow.com without Brandon whose constant support of everything domain-related made his name and Escrow.com synonymous. It is, of course, commonplace for major management shake ups to occur when one company acquires another but that doesn't make it any easier to see someone who has been one of the industry's institutions suddenly off the playing field (a situation we have to think will be short lived). We can only wish Brandon the best, appreciate everything he has done for so many people in this business and look forward to his next endeavor, knowing that he will excel in anything he chooses to do.