The group of investors seeking to buy Skype from Ebay have agreed to give the founders a large stake in the business to end the bitter dispute over the ownership of the technology that underpins the online communications service.
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold Skype to Ebay in 2005, will take a 14 per cent stake in the business. The investor group, including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will take 56 per cent. Ebay will retain a 30 per cent stake in the business. Index Ventures, which had originally planned to take a 3 per cent share of the business will exit the deal.
The Silver Lake-led group had originally planned to buy 65 per cent of the business, leaving 35 per cent with Ebay.
In return, Skype will get full ownership of the software that the business runs on, and Mr Zennstrom and Mr Friis will drop the lawsuits they have filed in the US and in London against Skype and the investor group.
The settlement will not change the financial terms of the deal, which values Skype at $2.75bn. Ebay will still receive $1.9bn in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125m.
Legal wranglings over Skype’s software had become a key stumbling block for the deal. When Ebay bought the company in 2005 it had not bought rights to the software, which remained under the ownership of Mr Zennstrom and Mr Friis. They later accused Skype of violating the licence terms for the software, threatening to shut down the service.
Mr Zennstrom and Friis had been keen to become involved again with Skype and had made their own approach to Ebay to buy the business back. When this was rebuffed, the pair turned the technology ownership dispute into a bargaining chip to be included in the Silver Lake-led deal.
“We are very pleased to have the litigation resolved. We remain confident in a great future for Skype, and we look forward to working with Niklas, Janus and the other investors as partners to help the company achieve its full potential,” said Egon Durban, managing director of Silver Lake.
