It is commonly called one of the dumber deals to come out of techland – which has given birth to quite a few dud transactions in its time. Online auction house Ebay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6bn. Two years later, it took a $1.4bn writedown after fewer Ebay users than expected were tempted by software that makes calls over the internet. But on Tuesday Ebay announced it had sold a 65 per cent stake in Skype for an implied valuation of about the same that it originally paid, after adjusting for the earn-out payments to the company’s founders.

Far from being chastised, therefore, former chief executive Meg Whitman deserves credit for orchestrating one of the better performing investments over the past five years. While the value of Skype has remained flat, the Bloomberg world equity index has fallen 6 per cent while the S&P 500 has dropped by a fifth. Including their latest rally, even US tech stocks are down by a 10th over the same period. And that is before Ebay makes a writeback.