Same with Ford. And while I do think the addresses should be returned, they should get market value or above for them. We should not punish companies for buying into the future, which turned out to be a great investment.

Alternative view - those addresses should not be "returned". They're owned. I hope hoarders will get blocks as large as they can so that we experience real shortage and start seeing the first ipv6-only services.

The addresses are not owned by those in the list. They are allocated for an ongoing yearly fee.

If they were bought early enough, they count as legacy and are fee-free. And even if they aren't, the current price trend will easily outgrow the fee.

They probably got a /8 early and gave each regional office their own /16, so they'd have to unpick all the addresses they're currently using before they could sell off any.

I'm sure they could split it into /16s and sell off the empty ones.

Prudential got that block 5 year before IPv6 was introduced.

Maybe they just bought it for insurance.