Skype posts
FeedPosted Nov 6th 2009 9:50AM by Guest blogger (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Silver Lake Partners, Private equity
This post was written by DailyFinance contributor Sam Gustin.
Memo to would-be Silicon Valley moguls: do not double-cross a pair of highly litigious billionaires.
After weeks of back-and-forth legal jousting, the tech heavyweights fighting over Skype are set to announce a deal in which the founders of the popular Web-calling service would regain a stake in the company they sold to eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) in 2005 for $2.6 billion, according to Bloomberg. Nice trick.
The pact ends an at-times vicious soap opera replete with accusations of back-stabbing, dishonesty, and outright theft against Mike Volpi, the pair's one-time Golden Boy, who they believe double-crossed them. The legal circus held up eBay's proposed $2 billion sale of Skype to a consortium of private investors led by Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, the investment firm of Marc Andreessen, the billionaire co-founder of Netscape.
Continue reading Skype soap opera ends as founders set to regain stake ahead of $2B sale
Posted Apr 2nd 2008 4:00PM by Tech Confidential (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rumors

Though tech M&A has been fairly quiet of late because of macro-economic conditions, the rumor mill is churning strong, with
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:
GOOG) in the middle of two rumored deals.
Shares of online travel site Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) were up more than 2% Wednesday on top of Tuesday's 10% gain on rumors of a potential buyout by Google. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is reviving a rumor from last year that eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is in talks to either sell Skype to Google or the two sides would form a partnership involving the Internet phone service provider.
When we last wrote about a possible Google buy of Skype in November, we didn't think anything was imminent. After all, eBay would have been selling at a low point, having just announced the unit was underperforming. At that time, Skype's quarterly revenues were $98 million. In its last earnings report, Skype's revenues were reported at $115 million, a 76% increase versus the prior year and a 17% increase quarter-over-quarter. So it's not like Skype is a total disaster.
Continue reading at TechConfidential.com.
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