Bernd Bergmair

Bernd Bergmair (also Bernard Bergemar; born 1968 in Ansfelden, Upper Austria) was the controlling beneficial owner of MindGeek (later Aylo), the parent of Pornhub and adjacent platforms, from approximately 2013 to 2023. He attended HLBLA St. Florian, graduated from the University of Linz in 1992 with a thesis on corporate-acquisition financing strategies (M&A, LBOs, MBOs), received an MBA from Chicago Booth in 1994, and joined Goldman Sachs in New York. He rose to partner at Goldman and worked in Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and London.

In 2006 he became the owner of RedTube via a Hong Kong vehicle, Bright Imperial Ltd. In 2013 he sold RedTube to Manwin/MindGeek as part of a management buyout that simultaneously made him MindGeek’s majority owner — a circular structure characteristic of the opacity that defined his decade-long ownership. He controlled MindGeek through RT Holding S.à.r.l. (in which he held a documented 59.99% stake) and through three further shell companies including Acaju Investments S.A. He operated as a silent partner: no public social media, no interviews, no corporate communications, unknown to most MindGeek employees. The only photograph of him in public circulation prior to the 2020 Financial Times investigation was a blurry image from a 2002 Chicago Booth alumni publication.

Per MindGeek’s 2018 consolidated financial statements, he received $24 million between 2014 and 2018, with approximately $10 million per year subsequently, plus high monthly licensing fees through Luxembourg holdings amounting to a minimum of $1.5 million per month. As of 2021, MindGeek owed one of his companies $200 million in debt repaid in monthly installments of $1.5 to $1.8 million.

When Ethical Capital Partners acquired MindGeek in March 2023, ECP acquired class X shares from Acaju Investments S.A. and Bergmair-owned RK Holdings LLC. Whether and to what extent Bergmair retained beneficial-ownership interest in the post-ECP entity is unresolved in public record.

¶Where his role figures

• Expanded profile on Bernd Bergmair — the canonical case study tracing the shell-company structure, the licensing-fee extraction, and the 2023 ECP transition.
• Brunien-ECP and MindGeek-Aylo — his role in the failed Bruinen acquisition attempt and the eventual ECP transaction.
• Colbeck Capital and the Goldman alumni financing chain — the structural parallel between Bergmair and the Colbeck principals (all former Goldman Sachs bankers providing niche financing for legally dubious ventures Wall Street firms would not directly fund).
• Mapping Russian organized crime, oligarchs, and the Trump orbit — Bergmair’s role in the broader sexual-content/blackmail-infrastructure thread.