Ebay Inc. today announced that it will sell 65% of Skype for approximately US$1.9 billion in cash. The buyer is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board.  The transaction is expected to close in Quarter 4, 2009.

Although Skype continued to grow strongly during Ebay’s ownership, Ebay failed to leverage Skype’s dominance in the free video and voice calls market.  It is not entirely clear why Ebay did not try more aggressively to incorporate Skype in its listings, enabling buyer and seller to communicate with each other quickly and effectively. This sale values Skype at close to what Ebay paid for it, and considering that Ebay wrote down $1.4 billion of its Skype investment, it should be able to generate a big “profit” from this transaction.

Here is the list of Ebay’s press releases.  Below is a chart with news for Ebay.