eBay Finally Spins Off Skype

EBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) announced Friday that it has completed its spinoff of the Internet telephony unit to a consortium of investors that includes Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion, with the investor group getting 70% of the company and eBay retaining the rest. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis also got a 14% slice of the company, after settling litigation between their latest project, Joltid Ltd., and Skype that alleged patent violations (The Deal Pipeline subscribers can read more about the settlement here). EBay said it got about $1.9 billion in cash and a $125 million note.

As Skype president Josh Silverman said in a brief blog post, "Say hello to the future." There's no doubt that the company will be better off independent than it was within eBay, which acquired Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005 and never figured out how to make the deal work. With the Joltid settlement, Skype has control over the intellectual property necessary to keep its peer-to-peer technology working.

The question now is how and when will Skype's investors see an exit to their investment. Will the 2010 IPO market be as rosy as some predict, or will it end up in another corporate acquirer's arms? - Olaf de Senerpont Domis