eBay May Sell Skype Today For 2 Billion

The buyers of eBay's internet phone unit Skype may include Andreessen Horowitz, a new VC firm headed by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, who sits on eBay's board and Index Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that was an early investor in Skype. eBay has not disclosed the sales price of Skype, but earlier had said that the company would like to have two billion dollars for the phone unit.

According to Thedeal.com "In April, it was reported that Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were teaming up with PE firms to buy the unit but that their $2 billion offer wasn't good enough. The unit has given eBay trouble since VoiP isn't part of eBay's main business. eBay did save more than $1 billion since Skype failed to meet certain performance targets. eBay CEO John Donahoe even called Skype a distraction and has been readying a move for quite some time, saying Skype would IPO in the first half of 2010."

Skype is on track to take more than 600 million dollars in revenues this year.

Written by Armen Hareyan