Skype Ltd. CEO Josh Silverman's comments to
Reuters on Friday about the company's relationship with parent eBay Inc. are sure to set off a fresh round of speculation about a possible sale. According to Silverman, all is well between the two companies, and he's "delighted" with the level of support from eBay. That assessment comes despite eBay CEO John Donahoe's comments to the
Financial Times on April 17 that if synergies don't materialize soon, Skype could go on the block. In October, the online auction giant took a $1.4 billion write-down off Skype's $4.3 billion price tag. And the Skype unit also missed several performance milestones, letting eBay
off the hook for about $1 billion in earnout payments.
In selling the deal to investors back in 2005, then-eBay CEO Meg Whitman said tying in Skype with the company's PayPal
payment option would significantly bolster the auction business. But
according to
ars technica,
eBay apparently did little to get the companies' engineering teams
working together or to market the Internet phone option in any meaningful way. According to
the report, "eBay seems to have bought Skype and set it on auto-pilot
(destination: nowhere) almost immediately."
As we reported in Corporate Dealmaker, eBay had to overcome
plenty of obstacles to put this complex transaction together in the first place. But as the developing story of a possible Skype sale shows, delivering on the promised synergies of the deal is proving even more difficult.
- Suzanne Stevens
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