Four private equity groups have joined forces to support the founders of Skype, the revolutionary internet calls group, in an attempt to buy back the business from eBay.

KKR, Warburg Pincus, Providence and Elevation Partners are backing Niklas Zennstrom and Jannus Friis in a bid to repurchase the company they sold for $2.6 billion in 2005, according to US reports.

However the two sides are said to be far apart on price and any deal looks to be a long way off.

Analysts say eBay believes it can fetch at least $1.7 billion (£1.14 billion) for the business.

Speculation about eBay selling Skype, which has more than 405 million registered users, has been mounting for months.

In January John Donahue, the internet auction site’s chief executive, seemed to lay the ground for a sale when he described Skype as a “great standalone business”.

He also conceded that the “synergies between Skype and the other parts of our portfolio are minimal”.

Ebay bought Skype, which revolutionised the calls market by allowing users to phone friends and relatives across the world free, in 2005, for $2.6 billion.

It has admitted since then that it massively overpaid for the business and in 2007 it took a $1.4 billion writedown on the asset.

Likely buyers had been named as Google, the internet search engine and AT&T and Verizon, the US phone giants.

The US reports said that Zennstrom and Friis initially approached eBay. After securing its approval for their plans the pair rounded-up private equity groups to back them.

The plan centred on the private equity groups contributing around $1 billion to the deal.

Ebay would also have provided financing.

Skype achieved revenues of $145 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

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