Skype Founders Niklas Zennstorm and Janus Friis are talking with private equity firms KKR, Warburg Pincus, Providence Equity Partners and Elevation Partners to raise money to buy Skype back from eBay, reports the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog. According to the report, the private equity groups would kick in about $1 billion. eBay is said to want $1.7 billion for Skype, though I bet they would settle for a lower offer. Given that Skype and Joltid, a company controlled by Friis and Zennstrom, are embroiled in a legal fight, eBay’s options to sell Skype might be limited. As some of our readers have pointed out, Skype has a bright future if the management continues its focus on innovation.
I’m still trying to understand how Meg Whitman signed off on the deal to buy Skype.
Buying Skype without securing the rights to Joltid’s Global Index is like buying Google without their search algo.
Skype is the type of product that doesn’t jive with either Apple or AT&T’s business plans of monopolization. Neither will talk about the alleged federal violations regarding Skype on AT&T’s wireless network. For more information on this issue, here is an article to read: http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/Iphone-Skype-Att-Lawsuit