Dewey & LeBoeuf has secured a new role as eBay's go-to M&A counsel after hiring the online auction site's long-term advisers from Cooley Godward Kronish last month.

Three M&A lawyers Dewey hired from Cooley last month led the firm's team representing eBay on its $1.9bn (£1.15bn) deal to unload a controlling interest in Skype to a consortium of investors.

The deal ends a failed marriage between eBay and Skype – one that started in 2005, when Cooley advised eBay on acquiring the internet phone service for $3bn (£1.82bn). EBay had hoped to integrate Skype's peer-to-peer voice technology with its auction website, but the plan was never relealised.

Silver Lake Partners, Silicon Valley's most prominent private equity firm, led a consortium of buyers who will own 65% of Skype under the terms of the deal, which was announced on Tuesday (1 September). The deal will see eBay receive $1.9bn in cash and $125m (£76m) in debt instruments from the buyers.

Sullivan & Cromwell advised Silver Lake, led by partners Richard Morrissey and Richard Pollack. Sullivan partners Brian Hamilton and Benjamin Perry also helped represent the consortium, which includes Index Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm, and Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape.

Dewey lead partners Richard Climan and Keith Flaum led the firm's team on the matter. Both are recent Cooley departees, and Climan was most recently the highly-regarded M&A chair at Cooley. The team also included M&A partners David Smith, Jane Ross and Ivan Presant and finance partner Gregory Owens.

Flaum declined to comment on the specific timing of the deal, but said it bridged his time between the two firms.

Sidley Austin also advised eBay on the deal. Sidley was instructed on the eBay matter more recently; with the company turned to Sidley for advice on a possible Skype initial public offering earlier this year. Since Sidley developed a familiarity with Skype, eBay decided to keep the firm on the matter even though it opted to sell Skype instead of going through with the initial public offering, Flaum said.

Sidley's team included partners Gary Gerstman, Paul Choi, Thomas Thesing and Sharon Flanagan.

The sale is the second high-profile media deal of the week coming after the announcement on Monday (31 August) that Walt Disney is to acquire comics group Marvel Entertainment for $4bn (£2.5bn). The bid saw Dewey again secure a role for regular client Disney, with Paul Hastings Janfosky & Walker acting for Marvel.

Cooley did not immediately respond to inquires about whether the firm expects to retain eBay as a client. However, there was a more positive development for the firm this week when it announced the hires of three intellectual property litigators from White & Case. The trio – Heidi Keefe, Mark Weinstein and Mark Lambert – represent clients including Facebook, Cisco Systems and HTC in patent cases.

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