Ascio is a privately held Danish company based in Copenhagen with sales offices in Oslo, Munich and Zurich. The group includes SpeedNames Business and SpeedNames Online, and provides domain name services across Europe. Major shareholders are founder Nikolaj Nyholm and venture capital funds IVS, NVP and Vækstfonden.

The company stands for a classic example of Danish entrepreneurship, writes Computerworld. Nikolaj Nyholm founded the company as Speednames in 1999. It changed its name to Ascio in 2001 as it started to provide reseller services to external partners. The company now has more than 300 international partnerships with leading Telcos, Internet Service Providers, and Internet Portals.

Nikolaj Nyholm has since left the company and is now heading a new Swedish start-up company, Polar Rose, in Malmö just across Øresund.

Group NBT is a leading UK domain name management company and managed web hosting provider. With the acquisition the company becomes the leading pan-European provider of domain name management services.