eBay reaches deal to sell Skype

Online auction site eBay has agreed to sell the majority of internet phone company Skype for about $2bn (£1.2bn).

Skype is to be majority-owned by a group of private investors, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and private equity firms.

EBay will keep a 35% stake in the firm, which it has been trying to sell for some time. It has said that Skype had "limited synergies" with it.

The deal values Skype at $2.75bn. EBay bought Skype for $2.6bn in 2005.

The new owners are Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures - which originally invested in Skype - as well as private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

They will pay $1.9bn in cash, and give a $125m note to eBay, meaning that it promises to pay that amount on demand or at an agreed time.

For sale

Earlier this year, eBay had said that it planned to spin off Skype and list its shares in the first half of 2010, an announcement many took as a signal that the firm was for sale.

Ebay wrote down the value of the firm to $1.2bn a year after it was taken over.

Including payouts to Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who founded Skype in 2003, eBay paid over $3bn for the company.

Skype's software lets computer and mobile phone users talk to each other for free and make cut-price calls to mobiles and landlines.

Unlike traditional mobile calls, which are transmitted over a cellular network, Skype turns your voice into data and sends it over the internet.

Since being acquired, the number of registered Skype users has risen to 405 million from 53 million, though free user-to-user calls still dominate the service.

The deal should be finalised by the last three months of the year.

Government may sell 15 pc stake in Coal India

The government is planning to increase its disinvestment target in Coal India from 10 per cent proposed earlier to 15 per cent as it wants to put a sizeable number of shares in the market and also offer them to employees and farmers displaced by its mines.

"The company wants to offer a chunk of shares in the market so that there is an adequate floating stock for

trading," a Coal Ministry official said, adding that it would be only through enough offering that Coal India Ltd would be able to discover its valuation.



The official said the CIL's initial public offering of about 15 per cent would be done in one go and not in bits and

pieces.



The company, which has a paid-up equity capital of about Rs 6,316 crore, clocked a pre-tax profit of Rs 8,738.46 crore in the last fiscal.



It plans to offer stock options to over 4 lakh employees. Besides, it would also offer shares to the displaced farmers as part of the compensation.



CIL has mines spread in Chattishargh, orissa and Jharkhand on land acquired

from farmers.



While the officials did not specify any time-frame on the IPO, the company and the ministry is in touch with market regulator SEBI on the proposal.



CIL Chairman P S Bhattacharyya had met Disinvestment Secretary Sunil Mitral last month to discuss the stake-sale proposal.

Sensex falls for third day on weak global cues

The stock markets extended losses for the third day on Wednesday with the barometer index shedding 83.73 points on selling by funds that took cues from weak Asian markets.

The 30-share Sensex, which had lost nearly 370 points in the last two trading sessions, fell by 83.73 points, or 0.54 per cent, to close at 15,467.46 points.



The key index touched the day's high of 15,628.10 points and a low of 15,392.68 points as the market remained choppy.



Blue-chip stocks led by realty, auto and banking segments recorded heavy losses. Among the 30 Sensex scrips, 21 counters closed with losses, while eight ended higher.



The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty fell by 17 points to 4,608.35 points.



Marketmen said a steep fall in the US Stock markets on Tuesday night and a weak trend in Asian region mainly dampened investor's confidence.



They said the market sentiment further affected after a weak opening in European stock markets this afternoon.



In Asian region, Japan's index fell by 2.37 per cent, Hong Kong's by 1.76 per cent, Singapore's index by 1.02 per cent.



The US Dow Jones Industrial Average index lost 1.96 per cent and the Nasdaq by 2 per cent on renewed concerns about a global economic recovery after reports of more US bank failure.



Reports said three more US banks failed on Friday last week, bringing the total number of failures to 84 this year so far as the banking industry grapples with deteriorating loans.



The European stocks opened lower by one per cent with banking stocks taking the most points off the index, which pulled down the Sensex maximum in the fag-end trading.



Metal sector stocks led by Sterlite, the biggest copper producer, retreated 3.16 per cent after the metal tumbled the most in more than two months on the London Metal Exchange.



ICICI Bank fell by 1.15 per cent, Maruti Suzuki by 2.27 per cent, Mahindra and Mahindra by 2.09 per cent, DLF by 1.18 per cent, Grasim by 1.44 per cent and Larsen and Toubro by 1.07 per cent.



The realty index suffered the most falling by 1.76 per cent to 4,202.65 points followed by the auto index by 1.36 per cent to 5,940.58. The capital goods index fell by 1.26 per cent to 12,772.07, the power index by 1.08 per cent to 2,910.61 and the banking index by 0.61 per cent to 8,228.20