Ebay on Friday announced that it has successfully completed the previously announced sale of its Skype communications unit in a deal valuing the business at $2.75 billion. Skype originally paid about $3.1 billion for Skype back in 2005 – 2006. However, the transaction is considered to be one of the biggest fiasco in the tech world.

The buyer, who will control an approximately 70% stake in Skype, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Joltid Limited and certain affiliated parties, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz. It remains to be seen whether independent investors manage to make Skype truly profitable and successful in the forthcoming battle of voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) services.

Ebay received approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The company retained an approximately 30% equity investment in Skype. The company also purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million as part of a Skype debt financing.

Even though Ebay has never managed to integrate Skype into its core business, it looks like at the end it managed to increase capitalization of the telecommunication unit to approximately $3.93 billion, up from approximately $3.1 billion which Ebay originally paid for Skype.

Tags: Skype, Ebay