PayPal row heats up as eBay chair calls Icahn claims 'false and misleading' eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar has said activist investor Carl Icahn's comments about the firm are "false and misleading" as the row over the fate of PayPal heats up. In one of his notorious open letters to shareholders, Icahn accused eBay's board of having conflicts of interest that had affected its decision not to spin off …
Carl Ichan's absolute, sole, one interest in this is to make money for Carl Ichan at whoever's expense.
It doesn't matter that in the long run, it will cost Ebay and its investors money, or that it will cost money in the short run to do any split, because he will get his paypal shares, put them in an bucket with the Ebay ones, sell them, then go along and annoy the f*k out of someone else.
A toothbrush moustache may possibly be regarded as a passé fashion amongst some groups.
It's just barely possible that Arabs and Israelis don't see eye to eye.
An IT job in North Korea might not be enjoyable all the time
...nothing to do with the article...just running with understatement because that's more fun.
"That twat Icahn" will do in its place.
if i could, i would upvote your post for the rest of the afternoon, but sadly El Reg are limiting me to just a single upvote. but it's a single upvote with a lot of passion behind it.
someone needs to build one of those plug-ins that will go through the text on all the websites i read and replace "activist investor" with "that twat"
Question is, are they completely unfounded? What about PayPal and Intuit - are they competitors? What about the accusation that Mr. Andreessen is board member of 5 competitors of PayPal?
Would've been nice if these accusations were addressed in the response of Mr. Omidyar.
As an optimist, I would like to think that Icahn has bitten off more tha he can chew with Apple and now eBay/PayPal.
His loudly touted "victory" at Apple gained him only a tiny fraction of what he was asking. Yes that's a well known trick - ask for a lot, settle for a little; but it soon gets callibrated, as then does the response.
Instead of "Icahn", I'm hopeful his nickname may become "Ican't" (or in the context of Apple, perhaos with a different vowel?)
Once again Icahn proves himself to be little more than a bully with money. Rather than go out and start a business of his own and then do what he wants with it, he instead buys minority ownership of successful private companies and then tries to club them into running things for his financial benefit alone.
Icahn proves he is an asset stripper and not an investor.
The sale of Skype made sense as
a) It wasn't doing anything useful for ebay, Paypal or eBay + Paypal.
b) MS was prepared to pay silly money for it
c) There is no obvious way Skype itself can make money.
OTH
a) Paypal makes money and has potential
b) ebay makes money and has potential
c) If ebay didn't have PayPal or it didn't exist, the synergy means it would make sense to buy it or invent it.
d) Selling it only makes a quick buck for people like Icahn and in the longer term reduces ebay ability to do its business.
e) Even Tesco has a "bank" now. Oddly I trust them more than RBS/Ulster Bank etc.
f) While ebay & paypal isn't without faults I trust it better than the classfied ads and <enter name of major UK bank>
PayPal got me money back of a fraudulant ebay seller. Would they bother if they and ebay had no connection?
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