Skype President Alex Kazim will leave the company in January and return to eBay. He had replaced Rajiv Dutta, now head of PayPal, who had been eBay's Chief Financial Officer before briefly heading Skype.
Kazim will report directly to eBay CEO Meg Whitman to work on major strategic projects for the company.
An 8-year eBay veteran, he was formerly Senior Vice President of new ventures at eBay, has held leadership positions in all of eBay's businesses and was responsible for launching eBay's international classifieds sites, Kijiji.
Kazim joined Skype immediately following eBay's acquisition of the company 14 months ago. He was responsible for product development and innovation at Skype and reported to Niklas Zennstrom, Skype's Chief Executive Officer. With Kazim's departure, Henry Gomez, Skype's Chief Marketing Office and Director of Country Operations, has been named President. In his new role, Gomez will serve as an advisor to Zennstrom and the principal liaison with eBay and PayPal.
Gomez is a 7-year eBay veteran who joined Skype in November 2005 as general manager for North America, and built Skype's US and Canadian business operations before becoming the company's CMO. His current marketing responsibilities will be handled by the centralized London marketing team Gomez created in recent months.
According to eBay's press release, Zennstrom and co-founder Janus Friis, along with Gomez and the rest of the Skype management team, remain actively focused on the global expansion of Skype's business and continued integration with eBay and PayPal.
eBay shuffled executives around recently in a major reorganization, bringing Phillip Justus and Michael Linton to San Jose to report to eBay North America President Bill Cobb (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m12/i05/s01). And in July, eBay had gone through another reorganization when PayPal President Jeff Jordan announced his resignation (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m07/i06/s01).
