Saturday, September 12, 2009

Skype Deal Drama Gets Joost-ier - Digits - WSJ

Small world…

On Friday, Joost, the U.K. Internet video company, said that by shareholder vote it had removed Michelangelo Volpi from its board of directors and from his position as chairman of the company. Volpi, a former high-level Cisco executive, stepped down from Joost’s CEO position in July, and is now a general partner at investment firm Index Ventures. Joost in a statement said it was also “conducting an investigation into Mr. Volpi’s actions during his tenure as CEO and as Chairman.”

In his role at Index, Volpi helped organize the group of investors that’s buying Skype from eBay. Yet Volpi’s relationship with Joost could prove important to the Skype deal coming to a clean conclusion.

Why? Because Joost is owned by Skype’s Founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. They own another company called Joltid, which holds the rights to some of Skype’s core technology.

Skype Deal Drama Gets Joost-ier - Digits - WSJ

No comments: