Skype Appoints New General Manager, Chairman

Skype this week announced that it has appointed two new members to its senior management team.

 

David Gurle replaces Stefan Oberg, who will be leaving Skype in March. According to company officials, Gurle brings more than 17 years of telecommunications and collaboration technology industry experience to this role. He joined Skype on Jan. 7, 2010 and reports to Josh Silverman, Skype’s president.

 

Reports on Wednesday also said that Skype Technologies SA, the largest provider of international telephone service, said it named former Sony Ericsson (News - Alert) Mobile Communications AB President Miles Flint as chairman.

 

According to Business Week, Flint, 56, is an adviser to Silver Lake, the private-equity firm that invested in Skype last year. He will lead the Luxembourg-based phone company’s 17-person board of directors, Silverman said in an interview. Flint was president of Sony Ericsson Mobile from 2004 to 2007.

 

Silverman said the company is “very excited” to add Gurle to the Skype management team and is 'confident' that he can lead and direct the Skype for Business team’s next stage of development and growth.

 

“He has years of experience and a terrific reputation for building and leading world-class teams. He also brings product vision, technology depth, and a track record of success in creating and selling real-time communications software to enterprises that will prove invaluable as we continue to develop our Skype for Business proposition,” he said.

 

In November, eBay said it settled the litigation for sale of Skype, the popular Internet-based calling service that allows people to make free video and voice calls.

 

According to reports, Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis planned to drop their lawsuits against the company and the consortium of buyers whose bid to purchase 65 percent of Skype was announced in October, TMCnet reported. Under the new deal, the founders will own 14 percent of the company.

 

Gurle joins Skype from Thomson Reuters (News - Alert), where he served as its global head of collaboration services and head of its largest business in Asia, the sales and trading business division. Prior to joining Thomson (News - Alert) Reuters, he spent more than three years running Microsoft’s Real Time Communications business, a group that he founded. Gurle has also co-authored a number of books on VoIP and IP Telephony. He graduated ESIGETEL with an M.S. degree in computer science and telecommunications.

 

Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users.