EBay to Spin Off PayPal

When the going gets tough, firms call in consultants. When Bain or McKinsey arrive, they tell you to make a change. Is your firm centralized? Decentralize it! Is your firm decentralized? Centralize it. Donahoe's "master fix" and subsequent exit should give pause to industry thinking of hiring consultants to run their companies in the long-run; for as the saying goes: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Is anyone else worried about the long term stability of Braintree under such an aggressive board environment? I was always concerned about conflicts of interest with PayPal acquiring Braintree - two competing and incompatible ways to pay with a credit card. As much as I admire Braintree engineering, and I would normally trust a board to believe in the Braintree brand of reliability, it does no good if a single unpredictable actor, namely Icahn, could strongarm the parent company into underfunding or cannibalizing Braintree. Am I just being paranoid?

Great decision, allowing PayPal to grow beyond the virtual ceiling placed by being governed by a marketplace company which rightly has its own agenda before PayPal's.

Spinning off PayPal really hurts the long-term growth potential of EBay. They haven't grown much at all over the past few years, once you take out the PayPal revenue. That will really hurt the stock price. Meanwhile, I would expect PayPal's stock price to grow as it's potential for growth is pretty large. Will be very interesting to see how they split the existing EBay shares for shareholder and at what price.

The recent Alibaba ipo demonstrates this is a stupid idea and that eBay has been chronically mismanaged for years. That it has effectively squandered such a massive lead and headstart is incredible.

Icahn is only interested in Icahn. I can't really see this as positive for anyone just because Icahn has a track record of pressuring businesses into destroying their value creating engines in order to enrich his own coffers. He's a pillager, not a builder. Why does anyone tolerate doing business with him anymore?

This article come to mind. Would Google be interested in buying a stake in Paypal now?<p><a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-buy-slice-of-ebay-unlikely-says-analyst/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;google-to-buy-slice-of-ebay-unlikel...</a>

I think one of the major sources of eBay&#x27;s troubles is their decision to slowly abandon their P2P focus, in favor of the &quot;shopping mall of the internet&quot; model that Amazon uses. Rather than pursuing this model and doing it better than the competition, they chose to ape them, and badly.<p>Like CrazyCatDog said, eBay is the textbook example of what happens when a tech company is run by consultants who don&#x27;t understand the users.

This articles suggests only 20% of PayPal will be sold, although I doubt that number is anywhere near final. It&#x27;s just like EMC spinning off VMware. EMC held on to 80% of VMware [and still does?]. It lets them capitalize much more effectively on the faster growing subsidiary. Even today VMware trades at double the PE ratio that EMC does.

The one question no one seems to be asking is how much of PayPal&#x27;s revenue is due to transactions on eBay. I suspect that it is the majority. If that&#x27;s the case, then with the spinoff, it would be in eBay&#x27;s interest to make all other types of payments equally attractive on its site -- not so good for PayPal, I&#x27;d think.

Wait, payment processing is seeing a lot more competition and now they decide to split? I don&#x27;t know if this is such a &quot;value creation&quot; move.

Once this goes live, PayPal will sooner or later face stiff competition beyond its current stage under the umbrella of eBay, competing against Chinese players like those of alipay and tenpay which already have users in the hundreds of millions. These players are agressively looking into the markets outside of mainland China.<p>The landscape won&#x27;t change in a few years, but in a decade, may look completely different.

I wonder if this will affect PayPal&#x27;s recent enthusiasm for Bitcoin one way or the other.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the clock has just started ticking for PayPal to become accepted all over the web in places that it may not have been as welcome. For example, I&#x27;m sure Amazon will add PayPal within 90 days of Paypal going public (if not sooner).

eBay&#x27;s acquisitions have rarely made sense, PayPal being the only one I can think of that had synergy. Does anyone understand why they bought Magento, for instance?

Next target: Yahoo.

I&#x27;m amazed that this jackass who ran TWA into the ground still has so much staying power. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-carl-icahn-killed-an-entire-airline-2014-3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;marc-andreessen-carl-icahn-ki...</a>

NoOoOoOo!

market share is the most important thing. Paypal will hurtle without Ebay. I think this is a wise and significant decision. And hope Paypal could reduce rates or even chance the fees.

market share is the most important thing. Paypal will hurtle without Ebay. I think this is a wise and significant decision. And hope Paypal could reduce rates or even chance the fees.

Smart move, eBay divests before bitcoin really starts eating PayPal&#x27;s lunch