It looks like the eBay-Skype spectacle has finally come to a close. Despite all of the arguments (legal and otherwise) that cropped up at one point or another, representatives of both companies announced last night that the sale of Skype to an investor group is complete.
Josh Silverman, the president of Skype, adopted a rather enthusiastic approach when breaking the news. He wrote on the Share Skype Blog, “Great news – we’ve closed the deal with the new investors. . . . Our journey continues: say hello to the future!”
And that future appears to be a bright one, by the way. As had been agreed earlier, the transaction valued Skype at an impressive $2.75 billion (impressive if you ignore the fact that eBay bought it for $2.6 billion in 2005, anyway), and $1.9 billion in cash actually changed hands as the investor group acquired a 70 percent stake.
What’s more, the investor group (which was led by Silver Lake) includes such interesting organizations and people as Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Joltid Limited, and Skype’s original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.
This would appear to make it much more likely that SkypeIn service will expand into Canada, and there’s no telling how else the new owners will try to grow and improve the company.
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