Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Will JoltID Turn EBay’ Dream of Skype IPO Into a Nightmare?

The plot thickens – see the full post for more details

Unfortunately, there are some problems eBay will need to address in order to make this IPO happen.  Lately, there have been rumors of a buyout offer coming from the founders Niklas Zennstrom & Janus Friis, along with a consortium of buyout funds that includes KKR, Providence Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus. That news comes after JoltID, a company controlled by Niklas and Janus sued Skype over issue of core P2P technology. Skype/EBay later filed a counter suit. Having followed Skype for a long time, I know for sure that this is a big deal and any plans of an IPO can be derailed by this litigation.

In a post back in 2006, I had pointed out that this core technology wasn’t part of the Skype-eBay transaction.

Will JoltID Turn EBay’ Dream of Skype IPO Into a Nightmare?

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