Ebay completes sale of Skype

Ebay said last night it had completed its sale of its Skype unit, as it had vowed to do before the end of the year.

Ebay said last night it had completed its sale of its Skype unit, as it had vowed to do before the end of the year.

A settlement reached earlier this month over a pending legal case involving the web telephone services' founders, eBay and the buyers cleared the way for the sale.

Some analysts had worried that the case could have derailed the deal.

The deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion, gives eBay approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note in the principal amount of $125 million, eBay said in a statement.

READ MORE

EBay, which operates its marketplaces business and also owns web payment unit PayPal, retains an about 30 per cent stake in Skype. As part of a Skype debt financing, eBay purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million, it said.

The buyer of Skype is an investor group that includes private equity firm Silver Lake, Joltid Limited, investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.