He's forgetting about...
SNAD Fraud - how are PayPal and eBay going to be profitable if they're not in it together?
eBay has rejected both of Carl Icahn's nominees for its board, saying they're not qualified for the job – and has urged its investors to do the same. The online marketplace said in a pre-annual general meeting filing that it had looked at the candidates proposed by the activist investor, who's agitating to get the firm to spin …
Actually I can see where PayPal might be more profitable on its own than tied to eBay. Being tied as it is to eBay you should expect certain built-in reticence from competitors who might otherwise use PayPal for payment processing. But at that point the question becomes a bit more delicate: Should eBay spin-off PayPal, or should PayPal spin-off eBay? And once you phrase it that way it is a whole different game of three card monte.
I don't get the term 'activist investor'. Reading the term I get an idea of someone who uses their wealth to invest in ethical companies, or to influence boards of less socially-minded corporations to be a bit less evil.
Sure an 'activist' is not necessarily a 'good guy' but you expect them to have a message and a goal and the actions they take* are there to promote that message and achieve that goal. So far as I can tell, Icahn's only goal is: "make money" and his message seems to be: "everyone who doesn't agree with me and do what I say is wrong".
* - Organising rallies, misspelling slogans on poor-quality card stock, 'hacking' a company, throwing fake blood on people, picketing, civic disobedience, etc . . .
Actually, I could hope that Icaan might create some form of positive change at eBay / PayPal. However, the board recommendations were stated as "unqualified “...which pretty much describes eBay / PayPal in a nutshell, so Keep Calm and Carry On.
eBay nowadays is a greedy, self-serving joke. Most of you probably do not have eBay stores to administer and deal with - and you should consider yourself very lucky. Between Amazon's 25% cut of your sales and eBay's new 10% cut - plus the completely "independent" PayPal and listing fees - they have become the bloodsuckers of online sales. And then you have to meet their guidelines in everything from the small to them even telling you what business hours they will consider when counting performance against you (even if you don't actually HAVE those business hours), and I would love to tell them to "Eat s#!t!!“
How could you even imply that "Icahn Enterprises employees Daniel Ninivaggi and Jonathan Christodoro" would be beholden to Carl Icahn for anything!?
I'm sure they're just some promising new talent he discovered, and that "Icahn Enterprises employees Daniel Ninivaggi and Jonathan Christodoro" would always do what they believe is best for Ebay.