eBay Sells Skype
September 1, 2009 by Jim Hedger
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eBay has sold 65% of Skype, the free online and inexpensive web-phone application to a consortium of investors led by Silver Lake Partners. Other investors consortium include Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.
Expected to close near the end of 2009, the purchase values Skype at approximately $2.75 billion. eBay continuing to own 35% of Skype which it bought from original developers Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis in 2005 for $3.1 billion.
eBay has been trying to unload Skype for over a year now. Though the application makes just under $600 million per year, it has not been the boon to eBay merchants it was originally expected to be. Earlier this year, eBay mused about a Skype IPO which would have effectively spun the application into its own company. There is no word from the new majority owners if IPO plans remain on the table.
Three interesting side notes:
1/ Andreessen Horowitz is partially owned by Marc Andreessen, the developer who made the original Netscape web-browser and led the development team that created Firefox.
2/ Index Ventures was one of the original investors in Skype in early 2003.
3/ With approximately 410 million users, Skype added about 8% of eBay’s $835 Billion in revenues last year. Sold for 2/3 of what eBay paid for it in 2005, Skype should pay for itself three to four years from now.
Oracle Agrees to Buy Sun Microsystems
April 20, 2009 by Jim Hedger
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Oracle has agreed to purchase Sun Microsystems for approximately $9.40 per share in a $7.4 Billion cash purchase.
The two companies have been closely allied over the past two decades but the purchase comes two weeks after IBM declined to buy Sun Microsystems.
“Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”
In previous years, Oracle and Sun had worked very closely together though recently, Oracle has shifted its business towards other hardware manufacturers. The purchase substantially alters the landscape in the software/hardware business putting renewed pressures on companies as varied as IBM, Dell and HP.
The deal is subject to a Sun shareholder vote but is expected to close in the early summer. Over the weekend, the Sun board of directors unanimously approved the deal.
“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in a press release. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
