BUSINESS BRIEFS
Contract reached at Vegas Hilton
Advertiser Staff and News Services
LAS VEGAS — Negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract covering about 1,800 culinary workers and bartenders at the Hilton hotel-casino, the unions said.
The agreement is scheduled for a ratification vote today by members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and the Bartenders Union Local 165, according to a union statement released late Sunday.
The deal is the latest in a series of contracts negotiated with Las Vegas Strip employers since previous contracts expired June 1.
Union officials said a pact with the Hilton would leave the Tropicana hotel-casino as the only property still without a contract on the Strip. Negotiations also were continuing on behalf of 7,500 workers currently working under extended contracts at 12 downtown properties and two industrial laundries.
EBAY EXECUTIVE STEPPING DOWN
SAN FRANCISCO — eBay Inc. announced yesterday that the co-founder and chief executive of its Skype division was stepping down and that the parent company would take $1.43 billion in charges for the Internet phone service division.
Of the charges to be taken in the current quarter, $900 million will be a write-down in the value of Skype, eBay said. That charge, for what accountants call impairment, essentially acknowledges that San Jose-based eBay, one of the world's largest e-commerce companies, drastically overvalued the $2.6 billion Skype acquisition, which was completed in October 2005.
eBay also said yesterday it paid certain shareholders $530 million to settle future obligations.
In 2005, eBay wooed Skype investors by offering an "earn-out agreement" up to $1.7 billion if Skype hit specific targets — including a number of active users and a gross profit — in 2008 and the first half of 2009. The Skype shareholders holding those agreements received the $530 million in an early, one-time payout, eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said.
