EBay completes sale of Skype

San Francisco: EBay announced that it has completed the sale of its Skype unit, as it had vowed to do before the end of the year. A settlement reached earlier this month over pending litigation involving the web telephone services' founders, eBay and the buyers cleared the way for the sale. Some analysts had worried that the litigation could have derailed the deal.

Is social media more addictive than cigarettes?

	YES
	NO

   View result

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. EBay, which operates its marketplaces business and also owns Web payment unit PayPal, retains an about 30 percent 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, investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.