Silver Lake Wants More Deals Like Skype
Even though eBay's $1.9 billion sale of Skype to Silver Lake and a coalition of other investors has been the subject of a bitterly fought lawsuit, Silver Lake wants more of these "carve-out" deals, managing director Alan Austin told the Limited Partners Summit in Silicon Valley this afternoon. (Today is conference day for me). "Right now we have tremendous numbers of big companies looking around and saying, 'Hey, here's a business that's not core to us, we're thinking about selling.' It creates opportunity," Austin said. (Skype allows people to make free phone calls over the Internet). "Also, it's a leveraged deal -- not a ton, but significant leverage. Not 70% to 80% of the purchase price, but more like the old days -- the traditional capital structure we used to have before 2006 or 2007." Deals like Skype are also the reason Silver Lake raises such big funds, Austin said --
