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If
You Want Change, Make Sure You Get the Change You
Need
 If
you are still an undecided voter, think about this before
you make up your mind... John McCain has said that he
likes former eBay CEO and current highly paid consult, Meg
Whitman, for Secretary of Treasury. Whitman became a
billionaire while at the helm of eBay Inc. all the while
maintaining one of the lowest ratings of any CEO (around
3-5% approval rating in a Forbes poll).
Her hand-picked
replacement, John Donahoe, in his short tenure as CEO has
upset the eBay userbase of both buyers and sellers with many
changes envisioned by Whitman and while guided by her
insights and direction. The price of eBay stock has
dropped much more than other similar companies of late.
The share price is now trading at less than half its 52 week
high.
eBay just announced
last week that they would be borrowing $1 billion from Bank
of America (a recipient of the US Government's bailout
funds) to buy Bill Me Later....borrowing money to buy
consumer debt and a consumer financing company in a market
under an incredible credit crunch, caused largely by
individuals borrowing too much money en masse. Oh, and
eBay is borrowing the money despite having over $3 billion
in cash sitting in off-shore banks.
eBay's business
model and lack of competition made it an assured success;
Whitman simply sat at the steering wheel of the train as the
company grew, throwing money at pet projects and investments
and acquisitions that she felt would stimulate faster and
further growth. But many of her decisions resulted in
massive financial loss and upset the userbase. Skype
was purchased for several billion dollars, and eBay two
years later wrote off over a billion on the balance sheet.
At current Skype is still bringing in only several hundred
million dollars per year in revenue - not profit.
One of the
cornerstones of Whitman's policy / plans was expansion into
China and other Asian markets. A good idea, but
unfortunately for eBay investors she did not have the
foresight to do so until the markets already had their own
business models. Whitman dumped hundreds of millions
of dollars into eBay China only to later shut the site down.
The results were similar in other Asian markets where
Whitman tried to unseat the market leaders in online
auctions and ecommerce. If failure wasn't bad enough,
Whitman gave eBay in China another try, spending even more
money and failing to succeed again.
Under her
direction, eBay launched eBay Express, a site costing tens
(if not hundreds) of millions of dollars over the course of
its existence (yes, it failed also, and has been shut down).
Spending so much money on a site that simply duplicated
product listing already on eBay.com without having a way for
sellers to actually add products was not only redundant, but
just plain stupid. Express and the cost in time, money
and human capital was loathed by eBay's userbase, yet
Whitman continued to pour money into the project despite the
widespread opposition by the site's users.
If you were
horrified by the events of September 11th and if the thought
of anyone benefitting financially from the deaths of 3000+
Americans that day and from the ~5000 soldiers killed in the
war and 50,000+ wounded..... you might be equally horrified
to know that directly following the attacks on the World
Trade Center, Whitman launched the Auction for America
benefit auction on eBay.com. Her goal, she said, was
to prevent a decline in revenue and the associated drop in
stock price by appealing to the patriotism of Americans.
This was one of her successes, because by the beginning of
December 2001, eBay stock hit a 52 week high....a price that
is higher than the current stock price.
NPR has said
that whoever is appointed as Secretary of Treasury will
become "King of America." If you feel comfortable
having Meg Whitman crowned "King of America" and having your
financial well-being in her hands, then by all means, vote
for John McCain. Or you might want to join eBay
founder, Pierre Omidyar, in his support for Barack Obama.
Some things to ponder about Whitman before
the election:
-
Whitman's prior experience consisted of
working as a marketing director at Hasbro, overseeing
the global marketing of the Mr. Potato Head and
Playskool brands.
-
Whitman was NOT a McCain supporter in the
primaries, she was active as a co-chair in the campaign
of Mitt Romney.
-
Her only notable charitable donations
involve gifting $30 million to her alma mater Princeton
university.....while eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has
donated hundreds of millions to fund microfinance around
the world and created the Omidyar Network.
-
Whitman lost billions of dollars when she
overpaid for Skype.
-
Whitman was instrumental in purchasing a
stake in CraigsList, despite the remaining shareholders'
objections....then proceeded to sue CraigsList.
-
eBay stole the patented technology that
allowed the "Buy It Now" button to work properly (end a
current auction with a purchase immediately), then
fought to keep using it without paying the patent
holder. Then continued to use it despite an order
to cease, and eventually paid millions in a
settlement....all under the direction of Whitman.
-
During her tenure at eBay, Whitman
oversaw the #1 and #2 ranking sites for internet fraud,
phishing and identity theft (eBay #1.....Paypal #2).
BTW, that's bad, it means those sites have the most
fraud, not the least.
-
Despite millions of dollars of users
money being stolen by fraud via eBay & Paypal, Whitman
refused to implement any sort of verification process
for users of eBay...for fear it would effect the stock
value negatively.
-
Whitman has a horrible record when it
comes to investing. The only two acquisitions that
have resulted in good profits were former competitors -
Paypal and Stubhub. Both companies that were
beating eBay (in Payments and ticket auctions) were
bought to reduce competition.
-
Paypal, which Whitman headed while at
eBay, is not an FDIC insured bank.
-
It's not a bank at all, and the only
banking charter it has is on foreign soil.
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eBay Inc. Financial Links
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Welcome to FireMeg.com.
This site is meant to be a portal to all things eBay.
A lot of the content in the links provided may seem to have
a bit of a negative tone - that's reasonable considering
that eBay.com and Paypal.com rank #1 & #2 as the top
phishing (scam) sites on the internet. And judging by
the fact that eBay reports only 80 million of its 300
million users were active over the past year, something is
making masses of online shoppers upset.
Browse the links on this site to find discussions about
eBay, both pro and con. And if you fall into the great
majority of eBay registered users who are no longer active
for one reason or another, check out the links to other
online venues for selling your merchandise that may better
fit your needs.
Got a link relating to eBay
that you would like included on this page?
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