Business

Is Skype sinking?
by Claudia Sonea

I think this is the first question on everyone's mind after the announce made on Monday by eBay spokesman Hani Durzy. Zennstrom, a Swedish entrepreneur, co-founder and chief executive of eBay's Skype division is stepping down. The main concern is if the $1.43 billion in charges for the Internet phone service division was the reason or not. According to Durzy it wasn't. The official statement revealed that Niklas has some new projects and wants to spend more time on them. The write-down in the value of Skype of $900 million and the charges of impayment proved that eBay Inc one of the world's largest e-commerce companies, overvalued it at 2.6 billion dollars. Moreover on Monday Durzy also announced a on-time payout to the shareholders of $530 million due to the 2005 agreement when they promised $1.7 billion if Skype hit specific targets in 2008 and 2009. Niklas Zennstrom will remain non-executive chairman of Skype's board and taking care of some new projects like Joost, an Internet TV service he started in 2006 and will be launched at the end of the year. The temporary Skype CEO will be EBay chief strategy officer Michael van Swaaij, formerly vice president for European operations, until it is officially named another one that Russell Reynolds Associates is hired to search. Skype President Henry Gomez will return to eBay as senior vice president for corporate affairs. eBay's share rose and I firmly advise everyone to buy, buy now....there is no safer thing than it. Therefore Skype still has a long way until sinking.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071001/ap_on_hi_te/ebay_skype;_ylt=Ar_OgPjUUwzl98nIZ3iytdOs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 2:31 PM