Many changes will come to Skype after Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition goes through (pending regulatory approval). A few things, however, are expected to remain the same, including the company’s current presence in Silicon Valley and its management team, which includes a number of new recruits.
Representatives from Silver Lake Partners, one of the lead investors among the consortium of private equity, venture capitalist and pension funds that bought Skype from parent eBay in 2009, told Forbes that Skype will continue to be run out of multiple offices, even after it becomes a division of Microsoft.
The Internet telephony and video communications provider is currently based in Luxembourg. Company headquarters will stay there, in part because of the tax advantages that Luxembourg offers, says Silver Lake. Skype will also keep a development team in Stockholm and maintain a large presence in London because it is a good perch for selling Skype services into Europe.
More recently, Skype had carved out a presence in Silicon Valley, near Silver Lake’s home base of Menlo Park, California. The company will retain its office there, says Silver Lake, largely to recruit top engineers. Skype Chief Executive Tony Bates, who joined Skype in October 2010 from Cisco, will be based in that office, says Silver Lake.
Following the acquisition, Bates will become President of the Microsoft Skype Division and report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Silver Lake says it expects other Skype executives that it brought on over the past 18 months will also stay, in part because Microsoft is giving retention incentives and in part because the two companies will be able to create interesting products and services that fuse their two technologies. Of Skype’s current top 30 managers, the majority were hired since Silver Lake took ownership.
