Our favorite auction site eBay, is in the news today. eBay of course the 900 pound guerrilla in any discussion of the sale of Scouting collectibles (and virtually anything else you can think of). The Wall Street Journal announced that:
Chief Executive Meg Whitman is preparing to retire.
In the past few months, Ms. Whitman, who has led the San Jose, Calif., Internet auctioneer since March 1998, has been delegating more daily responsibilities to her lieutenants and is completing her succession planning, say people familiar with the matter. A decision about her departure could come within weeks, though the situation remains fluid, say these people.
I had previously written on some of eBay’s issues last December and this article seems to confirm some of the previous reports.
The company’s auction business, which allows individuals to buy and sell items online to the highest bidder or at a fixed price, accounts for more than two-thirds of eBay’s nearly $6 billion in annual revenue but has experienced slowing growth rates for the past few years. Any efforts to reverse the slowdown could involve drastic changes that may be more palatable under a new CEO. EBay has already warned Wall Street in recent months that it may alter how it structures its fees for listing and selling items by collecting bigger fees once sales close.
Mr. Donahoe has been wrestling with how to reverse the auction business’s declining momentum. Last year, he set into motion changes such as simplifying the auction Web site.
The auction business remains stagnant by some measures. EBay’s third-quarter listings of auction items for sale, a key barometer of the auction unit’s health, fell 3%.
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