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On Jan 22, EBay Inc Chief Executive Meg Whitman, one of the most powerful women in
Corporate America, announced her decision to retire from the online auction giant, as reported by
The Wall Street Journal.

When Meg Whitman joined as president and CEO in early 1998, EBay had only a few dozen
employees. EBay’s initial public offering came six months later.

Under Meg’s leadership, eBay has turned into one of the most-visited sites on the Internet,

with a Market Cap. of $36.35 billion (on Jan 28) and home to 15,000 employees!

“No CEO should stay more than a decade in the same job,” Whitman said shortly after joining
eBay, arguing that, over time, executives need fresh challenges and organizations benefit
from new perspectives.

And exactly 10 years later, she announced her retirement as eBay’s CEO.

On Jan 24, John Donahoe was named to the top spot at eBay by the departing chief executive
Meg Whitman. John Donahoe ia President of eBay’s Marketplace Division for the past 3 years.

“During the last three years, John and I have worked very closely together to arrive at this
day,” Whitman said in a prepared statement, “and we’ll continue to work together through the

transition. I’m extremely confident in John’s skills.”

John Donahoe has already made significant changes at eBay, including reorganizing and
de-cluttering the site and creating a new revenue stream with Google and Yahoo ads.
Donahoe has also been known for reaching out to eBay users to find out what’s most important
to them… and now he’s got a few big changes up his sleeve.

Prior to joining eBay, Donahoe he was the worldwide managing director of Bain, where he oversaw the consulting firm’s 29 offices and 3,000 employees.

According to a New York Times Report, John Donahoe expected to announce a major shift in fee structure to try to stave off increasing competition from Amazon and Google.

In an effort to reinvigorate growth of the core eBay site, Mr. Donahoe said he would shift
eBay’s emphasis from auctions to fixed priced listing, which could make the experience of
buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.com.”

“Auctions will always be the core of the core of eBay, it’s what makes eBay unique,” Mr. Donahoe
said in a joint interview with Ms. Whitman on Wednesday afternoon. But he noted that fixed
priced sales now account for 40 percent of eBay’s marketplace revenue. “We are following our
users. They like convenience so what we are simply doing is putting a more explicit focus
on that.”

Tags: eBay eBay+Online+Marketplace Corporate+eBay Meg+Whitman John+Donahoe

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under Corporate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.