eBay's latest buy: New CEOs for Skype, Shopping.com
Shopping.com's CEO, Josh Silverman, will take the helm of Skype, which has not had a permanent chief executive since co-founder Niklas Zennstrom stepped down in October.
eBay announced Monday that it has appointed new CEOs to its Skype and Shopping.com properties. At the helm of telephony company Skype will be current Shopping.com president and former Evite co-founder and CEO Josh Silverman; taking his place at Shopping.com will be Andre Haddad, who joined eBay in 2001 when it acquired his start-up, the European marketplace site iBazar.
This continues an extensive management shakeup at the online commerce giant, which saw the departure of longtime CEO Meg Whitman in January. eBay itself has been going through some tough times, with seller dissatisfaction leading to a boycott over fee hikes and new rules.
Meanwhile, many questioned whether Skype was a smart acquisition for eBay in the first place when the company disclosed a $1.4 billion write-down last year to handle Skype-related charges. Skype also suffered a two-day outage in the summer of 2007.
Silverman will replace interim Skype CEO Michael van Swaaij, who was appointed to the post in October when co-founder Niklas Zennstrom (now at the helm of Joost) left the post amid the $1.4 billion snafu.