eBay, Skype and the strangest M&A deal I've heard of

A short note on the eBay/Skype fiasco.....this is a chickens coming to roost thing.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that a due diligence team in this sort of size of transaction (eBay buying Skype) would not have been aware of the red flag that was the ownership of the underlying IP. (The biggest transactions I ever did were about 1/5th this size and for that price every jot and tittle was crawled over in minute detail). I would strongly suspect that there must have been a decision to overlook the IP issue.

So, what was eBay's management and Board thinking when they decided to press the button to buy? And more to the point, why were they thinking it? Why was it decided to overlook the IP issues? The mind boggles!

Fast forward a few years, and a soap opera like cast of characters manoeuvre to buy Skype from eBay, and even though most of the players seem to have been in place to see where the skeletons are buried, still the play goes on. As one of the commentators on the TechCrunch piece notes:

Niklas/Janus were obviously interested in buying skype, using the lawsuit to drive down the price which was effective… then Volpi who they hired to run joost teams up with Index who they let invest in skype, and Volpie/Index go on to steal skype from under Niklas/Janus without including them in the deal…

…that’s why this is getting uglier by the minute

I suspect anyone who has ever done M&A (and many who haven't) is pretty certain that a lot of dirty washing is going to come out now.......