David Sefton

David Sefton is the owner of Joe.ie and Her.ie, which he acquired in 2020 through his company Linton Capital. 

Sefton attended Leeds Grammar School from 1980 to 1990 before studying at  Oxford University between 1990 and 1994 taking an undergraduate degree in Jurisprudence followed by the postgraduate Bachelor in Civil Law degree. While at college he was involved in the Oxford Union and was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association for the 1992-93 Michaelmas term. 

Having completed his studies at Oxford, Sefton initially practised as a barrister, before joining the New York-based law firm Cleary Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton which specialises in business, finance and company law. Working in both the London and New York offices, Sefton engaged with companies as varied as Philip Morris, General Electric and Kuwait Petroleum. 

Although Sefton established Linton Capital in 2005 and has run the private equity/fund management company ever since, he also has extensive links with the fossil fuel sector.  

Between April 2002 and April 2005 he was Chief Legal Officer at Lukoil Financial Services. Lukoil is a Moscow-based energy (oil and gas) company and, as of 2018, the second largest company by revenue in Russia, after Gazprom. 

Between 2017 and 2019 he was Chairman of Aurora Natural Resources Limited, an oil and gas extraction and production company. He was simultaneously Executive Chairman of Anglo African Oil & Gas plc, which is listed on AIM, the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange. Incorporated in the United Kingdom, Anglo Africa works as an oil and gas developer and holds oil-producing assets in the Republic of the Congo.

Sefton’s first overt connection with digital media came in June 2018 when he stepped in as interim executive chairman at Unilad, a social media-focused publisher. Although a later bid to acquire Unilad was unsuccessful, in 2019 Sefton used his shareholding in WideCells (a company initially focused on stem cell services) to add a media and technology division and to rebrand the entire company as Iconic Labs. 

Although Sefton stepped down from chairing Iconic Labs at the close of 2019, he has engaged the company to manage digital media properties subsequently acquired by Linton subsidiary Greencastle Capital (established in 2020). These properties include Joe.ie and Her.ie both of which were acquired from Maximum Media in the summer of 2020.

Thus although Sefton does not appear to have any day-to-day editorial involvement in the media outlets he owns, he has been directly involved in selecting the senior editorial teams in charge of these outlets.