Dan Primack

eBay announced this morning that it has reached a settlement with Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, whose legal actions were complicating eBay's sale of a majority stake in Skype to a private equity consortium. Under terms of the deal, Zennstrom and Friis will receive a 14% stake in Sykpe (still valued at $2.75 billion), with eBay holding 30% and the remainder going to Silver Lake Partners, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Original consortium partner Index Ventures is out. So we've got 5 questions for Marc Andreessen, the eBay board member who is half of Andreessen Horowitz's eponymous founding duo: 1. You told TechCrunch this morning that the money for this deal was in escrow, and would have gotten done even without a settlement with the founders. Why would you have gone forward with all of those troubles hanging over your head? Because there was another route to take, and a whole other side to this in terms of legal arguments we could have pursued. We were following those routes simultaneous to talking with the founders, and as it turns out we never had to file any lawsuits. These were known issues going into the deal. One reason Skype was even available was because of these issues. Our view was that a settlement would be the preferred outcome, and we’re very happy with how it turned out. We were pretty sure this is what was going to happen, because it made the most sense.

Frazier Technology Ventures yesterday said that it would no longer make new investments, nor raise another fund. As part of that announcement, general partner Len Jordan said that he would be joining fellow Seattle-based venture firm Madrona. So we’ve got 5 Questions for Len: 1. When did you guys formally decide that Fund III just wasn’t going to happen? Earlier, in the first half of this year. The fund-raising environment was just very difficult, and I don’t think we foresaw it getting much better anytime soon. We’re a relatively new group, so we drew the conclusion that we should suspend. I want to emphasize, though, that it had nothing to do with our portfolio, which we feel very good about. I think we have a lot of value inside our 11 active portfolio companies, and had a very good exit last year when SNAPin was acquired by Nuance.

It’s that time of year, when MBA candidates’ thoughts turn to flights of summer internships. So let’s help them out, through our 7th Annual Internship Rodeo. Today I am asking firms to contact me via email if you’re looking for a summer intern from the current crop of first-year MBA candidates. All types of firms need apply — VC, LBO, Growth Equity, I-banks, Mezzanine, Consulting, Funds-of-Funds, LPs, etc. Same diversity goes for geography. In your emails, please include your firm name, job location and type of business (i.e., VC/LBO/etc.). You also may include any additional information you would like posted, including a contact email address for applicants. If you would prefer me to create an email account for you, just let me know. Your firm name will be disclosed, unless you specifically request it to be kept anonymous (which about 30% of firms requested last year). Once compiled, the listings will be posted in the peHUB MBA Forum, an online message-board for MBA candidates. It currently has over 2,000 members, and that’s sure to grow once word of the Rodeo gets around.

Earlier this afternoon, we reported that Cheng Tang was still employed as a financial consultant to 5AM Ventures, despite having recently been charged by the SEC with insider trading. 5AM general counsel Paul Stone just called to say that the firm has now terminated its contract with Tang, after apprising its LPs of the situation....

Update: 5AM Ventures has terminated Chen Tang In April 2008, buyout firm Friedman Fleischer & Lowe learned that chief financial officer Chen Tang was under investigation for insider trading. The firm immediately suspended Tang, cooperated with the SEC and fired him two months later. What a contrast between FFL and 5AM Ventures, where Tang has been working for at least the past six months as a back-office consultant. 5AM has neither suspended nor terminated its agreement with Tang, even though he was formally charged last Friday with helping to reap more than $8 million in illicit profits via an insider trading scheme. 5AM has declined to say exactly when Tang began work, but we know that he's essentially been manning the books since VP of finance Amy Berliner left in early August to join Andreessen Horowitz. He also was with 5AM while Berliner was still at 5AM, but on maternity leave.

Lots of blog buzz today about a NY Times story on Al Gore's cleantech investments, and if such activity is ethically compatible with his lobbying for environmental legislation that could benefit his portfolio. Not surprisingly, critics see irreconcilable conflict. The Drudge Report, for example, has a breathless header about "Gore's big profits from global warming." Other outlets have used the term "profiteer," and even the NYT regurgitates the meme that Gore wants to become the world's first "carbon billionaire" (without noting it was first coined by virulent climate change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe). The NYT also rehashed Rep. Marsha Blackburn asking Gore about conflict of interest during a House hearing earlier this year, but without her daft question of whether or not Gore was "aware of... capital firm Kleiner Perkins." For the record, Gore has been a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for more than two years, and listed as such on the Kleiner Perkins website.

Big day over at Greylock Partners, which has closed a new fund, hired a big-name new partner and agreed to move its East Coast office from staid Waltham to trendy Cambridge. Fund XIII came in at $575 million, which is significalty higher than the $500 million Greylock raised for its twelfth fund in 2006. Partner Bill Hellman says the added capital was the result of existing investors requesting more than their pro rata shares. Greylock doesn't take pre-determined management fees -- it operates on year-to-year budgets -- which might help explain why liquidity-drained LPs were ready to open their pocketbooks for Greylock. Greylock also announced that LinkedIn co-founder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman has signed on as a partner. LinkedIn is a Greylock portfolio company, having first raised money from the firm as part of a $10 million Series B round in 2004.

Chatting with Reuters about new VC performance data, which remains depressed due to the lack of VC-backed IPOs. Per usual, Carrie Lee is in New York and I'm just a few paces away from the home office. Video after the jump...

Reuters sent a cameraman to our Boston cleantech event last night, and used some of the clips as part of our weekly video conversation:

Great to see so many of you come out last night, for peHUB's Boston cleantech event. The specific focus was on federal financing and regulatory issues. A few quick takeaways from the panel (from memory, since it’s hard to take comprehensive notes and moderate at the same time): * Lot of discussion about how cleantech is a difficult business for early-stage investment, in that company maturation can push the limits of a traditional VC fund structure. Roger Berry of C Change Investments noted that some infrastructure funds in Europe are actually proposing 15-year or 20-year investment cycles. Hadn’t heard that before. Would make sense from the perspective of matching the money to the opportunity, but I’m not sure any LP would be willing to assume that a core group of partners would stick together for two decades (particularly given that anyone worth investing in for that long already has some career miles under their belt). * Most panelists believed some sort of climate bill would pass this year, although not much agreement on its contents (concerns that divisive healthcare debate is setting the stage for divisive energy debate). Also heard a few comments about how something like a Green Bank would make renewable energy companies more competitive with oil & gas, which already receive massive federal subsisidies.