Skype Execs Purged On Eve of MS Takeover

jfruhlinger writes "You might think that the executive team that engineered a lucrative buyout for their company would be rewarded. But eight execs from Skype instead found themselves fired just before their company was formally taken over by Microsoft. It appears that this move isn't meddling from Redmond; rather, the private equity firm that owns a 70 percent stake in Skype wanted to cut back on the payout to company execs that would normally accompany this kind of transaction."

Comments

Fired?

[lymond01]

The spokeswoman declined to say whether the eight executives were laid off or resigned.

Someone knows something not in the linked article?

Shed no tears for them.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

These guys are big fish, swimming with the sharks. For example Gurle joined in Jan 2010. Just 18 months with the company. All the fired ones seem to be the MBA types who move in just to dress the company up for sale or IPO. Not the founders and early grunts who toil in garages and warehouses during the very early days living on pizza, sleeping in the office, desperately churning out code on a shoe string budget, not knowing if they can make pay roll next month.

These suits ate little fish in their time. They got eaten by bigger fish. They will again start eating little fish once again. Just stay out of their jaws, if you can.

Re:Interesting...

[TheSpoom]

Please don't use the word "rightsize". It's just insulting all around. They were fired.

Re:The invisible hand of captialism

[The Great Pretender]

"It appears that this move isn't meddling from Redmond; rather, the private equity firm that owns a 70 percent stake in Skype wanted to cut back on the payout to company execs that would normally accompany this kind of transaction."

I'll let you into a secret, they knew, probably got paid well and Microsoft were in on it.

1) As an exec in company like this you come in with a contract that has all departure routes covered, outside being fired for cause. It's standard practice and if you didn't require it, you wouldn't be doing that job. So yes, they were made whole and that means a lot of cash, probably a chunk of equity prior to the sale.

2) Microsoft negotiated the options for the buy out and that means assessing and pruning the management at Skype, before the sale. Skype didn't just futz with the company on the eve of the sale. Removing the folks MS don't want before the sale takes the focus off of MS for clearing out who it doesn't want. It would be a negotiated point.

3) My guess is that these execs are M&A (Mergers and Acquisition) specialists. They were likely specifically bought in to engineer something like this. So they've done their job and they'll move on to the next.

You don't sell/buy something for $8.5 billion and not talk about everything. Trust me, everybody knew way before now who was staying, who was leaving and how much money they were going to make.