Online auction giant eBay is replacing the founder and chief executive of its Skype online telephone subsidiary. It will also take a charge of $1.43 billion two years after buying the company.
Niklas Zennstrom, who founded Skype in 2003 together with Janus Friis and sold it to eBay for $2.6 billion, is stepping down as the company's CEO to become non-executive chairman of its board of directors.
Zennstrom will be temporarily replaced as CEO by Michael van Swaaij, eBay's chief strategy officer, while the company searches for a new leader.
EBay said it would be recording the $1.43 billion as an 'impairment charge' in its third quarter financial results, suggesting that its expectations had not panned out from the 2005 buyout of Skype even as its online telephony business took off around the world.
The personnel change comes six weeks after Skype's global network shut down due to what it called a massive restart of users' computers in a short timeframe as they re-booted after updating their Windows programmes. The massive restart and subsequent attempts to log on overwhelmed Skype's network, shutting it down.
