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AAA+++, Great Ebay Synergies, Tremendous PayPal Shareholder Value; Over Three Thousand Layoffs
Throughout the summer, one of the biggest activist stories, therefore one naturally involving Carl Ichan, was whether eBay would spin off PayPal. And sure enough, following months of promises and vows by John Donohoe that the company would never split, on September 30, around the time the market started hitting one record high after another, the company announced it would do precisely the opposite and all those activist demands would be fulfilled (and that John Donohoe would be handsomely compensated for his lies, especially since he would have no role in the resulting company).
So when the press release hit, some were wondering just what do the following buzzwords mean:
- Maximizes strategic focus and flexibility for eBay and PayPal to capitalize on respective growth opportunities in highly competitive, rapidly changing global commerce and payments markets
- Preserves eBay and PayPal relationships through arm’s length operating agreements
- Provides shareholders with more targeted investment opportunities; best path to sustainable shareholder value
Followed by even more confusing corporate buzz speak:
“eBay and PayPal are two great businesses with leading global positions in commerce and payments,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “For more than a decade eBay and PayPal have mutually benefited from being part of one company, creating substantial shareholder value. However, a thorough strategic review with our board shows that keeping eBay and PayPal together beyond 2015 clearly becomes less advantageous to each business strategically and competitively. The industry landscape is changing, and each business faces different competitive opportunities and challenges.
“eBay and PayPal will be sharper and stronger, and more focused and competitive as leading, standalone companies in their respective markets,” Donahoe continued. “As independent companies, eBay and PayPal will enjoy added flexibility to pursue new market and partnership opportunities. And we are confident following a thorough assessment of the relationships between eBay and PayPal that operating agreements can maintain synergies going forward. Our board and management team believe that putting eBay and PayPal on independent paths in 2015 is best for each business and will create additional value for our shareholders.”
Now, thanks to the WSJ, all confusion can be swept away, because as with every other case of corporate jargon, "synergies" and "shareholder value" simply meant one thing: thousands of pink slips.
EBay Inc. is considering a plan to eliminate thousands of jobs early next year as it prepares to separate its PayPal payments unit, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
The cuts are expected to primarily affect workers in eBay’s core marketplace division, these people said. One said eBay has discussed trimming at least 3,000 jobs, or 10% of its total workforce.
The planned layoffs appear to be part of eBay’s preparations to be a stand-alone company, and a potentially attractive takeover target. The marketplace division, which includes eBay.com and StubHub, is more profitable than PayPal but is growing more slowly and faces rising threats from Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , among others.
Analysts have said an independent eBay would be a candidate for a buyout, and job cuts would help lower operating costs, a key metric for buyout firms. Operating costs companywide jumped 14% in this year’s first nine months to $6.4 billion, which is roughly half of total revenue.
A spokesman declined to comment on the company’s plans for job cuts. EBay has said it intends to be an independent company.
It didn't take long before it leaked what EBay's thousands of pink slips are rumored to say: "AAA+++, great service, 2 months severance, would recommend be fired again"
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What the fuck do you guys want? An efficiently run company or one with a lot of asses polishing chairs?
Pick one already.
correct, corporations exist for 1 reason only, maximize shareholder value and make $
lol
eBay has been a self-hater of its core business thanks to stupid investors who want it to be another Amazon Ponzi.
"We pink-slipped some folks..."
During my brief experiment as a PayPal account holder, and on the couple of occasions during that time when I needed a bit of help, I found the wageslaves there to be uniformly unhelpful. They badly needed to be shit-canned.
it's really hit and miss, their decisions tend to be decree by whim, depending which rep you talk to. some genuinely do want to help, others don't care and/or are incompetent.
further, their rules and policies are constantly changing.
"synergies" and "shareholder value" simply meant one thing: thousands of pink slips."
Dont get soft here now ... dont worry about the folks who got laid off .. the good ones will always find another job, and the very very good will start their own Paypal and Ebay will see what mistake they made ... but again they have to be really, really good on deeds not just on paper if you know what i mean ...
Any time I see the word synergies you know an Ivy-league MBA is out to screw someone good. Mr Yellen would be proud.
Hear you, but isn't this about 60% of their workforce ?
They had to lay off some folks.
Innovation aside, so long as they still provide 100% of their service, does it matter?
I work for a British corporation. They don't hire easily which means they don't all of a sudden wake up one day and say we have 10% too many people.
Please. Hiring is one thing, firing something else altogether. especially in a fucking nanny state like the U.K.
Having had to go before an Unfair Dismisal tribunal to defend firing a worker of mine that ignored
a brush fire because it was his 'break', you have no idea LoP.
Maybe if eBay and PayPal weren't total dicks to their sellers they might have a better variety of merchandise and higher sales numbers... now it's just the Chinese with their gov't subsidized shipping selling "factory direct" ,, nobody can compete... and if they try they get burned by eBay authorizing refunds on good merchandise .. nothing like having someone keep your $100 item , mail you a brick back in the same box and file a complaint and get refunded before it even reaches your mailbox ...
eBay has been shit since they ended the feedback for buyers. That would end your "Brick Problem." I can't wait for this fucker to burn. PayPal I used to like, buit now I found found out that they are pulling accounts assocated with "politically incorrect" websites if someone complains, cutting off donations, subscritions and payments to websites they don't agree with.
Fuck them both.
Ebay was great before it bacame just a glorified storefront for most of the sellers.
But that is a dozen years ago or more.
as a seller, i've found that over the last 10 years, paypal has gone from awful to pretty good, while ebay has gone from great to pretty intolerable.
although, ebay is fairly good about perma-banning buyers who engage in return fraud (they can get away with it once, maybe twice, but if they keep doing it they are gone). use the "report buyer" button whenever appropriate.
chinese do make very cheap goods that are impossible to compete with if youre selling, say, ipad cases or other cheap trinkets.
to make it, you have to source quality goods for cheap (yes it can be done but it's not easy), or specialize and find a niche market (collectibles, etc), let your expertise in a particular area work for you.
Well that all depends if I'm a stock holder or is my ass polishing a chair?
Synergy.
See toldja guys, these goofy bastards all go to the same marketing & business conferences, synergy means layoffs. Its right up there with "Team!"...in lieu of giving you a raise.
Two words that are great morale boosters ;-)
Talk to corporate - like a BOSS
Micro manage - like a BOSS
Promote Synergy - like a BOSS
Hit on Debra - like a BOSS
Call a sex line - - like a BOSS
There's a very important caveat to this type of thinking, in this current environment. Many jobs that are productively employed around long term investment in the company (R&D, for example) are being slashed. This is all done to boost short term profits while cutting short term expenses. The share price, is then rewarded and increased profits are "reinvested" by buying another company (for just its product line) and laying off all their employees through "synergies" and the process continues unabated. Eventually, they will run out of innovations and good products to buy I presume, but the US economy will probably be unrecognizable long before we reach that brick wall.
Have faith in free markets ... in the long run we will be okay ... we always do!
correct about short-term gains to temporarily boost stock price.
but, it's not to use that stock price to buy another company, but rather, to *be bought* at advantageous terms.
it's my contention that icahn was pushing for the ebay/paypal split because he knows alibaba wants to buy ebay and only ebay, not paypal; they probably already have a deal made that is not yet public.
.
Software monopolies.
YOU - no longer needed.
Man, I tell you this economy is So Great companies are laying off!
Can we take any moar of this hot economy?
We must get labor costs to $0.00. There is no other way.
That doesn't bode well for inflation.
Actually if they could get "some folks" to pay to come to work then the economy would really start to boom!
If nobody is being paid, who buys the shit????
By the way, your avatar doesn't look like a 93 year old man who lives in a cave.
You mean there's no jelly of the month club christmas bonus coming
"eBay and PayPal are two great businesses with leading global positions in commerce and payments ... and each business faces different competitive opportunities and challenges.
I read this whole bit of the article twice, the second time systematically replacing "eBay" and "PayPal" with "Government" and "Finance", just for the fun of it. It didn't turn out as nonsensical as I initially thought it would.
As soon as a corporate press release says shit like "maximizes strategic focus and flexibility" you know somebody is going to get screwed.
Has eBay ever been solvent?
Honestly, I never thought the dot-com burst really completed. Too many operating-at-a-loss companies survived it.
So many buzz-words in such a small amount of characters.
Carefully arranged so as to sound impressive but actually say fuck all!
"we layed off some folks"
My views on my fixed buy it now listings are way down over the last 2 fall/winter seasons. But its still free advertising for me...
Reads like 3/4s of the corporate worlds Mission Statement. We are a conglomerated, environmentally responsible, vertically integrated, clusterfuck providing real time solutions to our clients and customers through a maze of offshored shell holding companies blah blah blah and shareholder value, dont forget that shareholder value part when we issue those 30 million free shares to all the top level employees........we are about shareholder value.
You read this crap and half the time you can't even figure out what the heck it is the company actually does.
Bullshit my friends, learn to bullshit. About the only thing I see the Universities teaching today; How to bullshit your way through anything. It shows when they turn in their thesis, write the resumes, create their strange job titles, report their financials, its how they get their jobs, obtain financing, sell you a car, report to their bosses or tell you how great things are in the economy.
"It's all Bullshit" George C.
"So when the press release hit, some were wondering just what do the following buzzwords mean:"
Ahhh gents... Brings back fond memories of this - one of my favorite sites - the Dack.com Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
Remember...?
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
That link still makes me laugh.
You have to be insane to be a seller on eBay. ..... you are treated like a criminal, when the criminal buyer files a complaint....I challenge anyone here to sell me an item on eBay....I will keep your item AND GET my money refunded.
Also anytime I spoke with someone from eBay or PayPal they were always calling from Asia....doubt if 3000 Americans even work at these two shitholes combined.
Bang-on Smoke... Been doin' it since 1997 - the beginning, and it has become a total & complete one-sided affair in favor of the buyer. Somewhere along the line, the matriarchal order at Ebay lost sight of what a 'transaction' is - namely, a Buyer AND a Seller - a 50/50 relationship that, when left alone, functions quite well. Gee, where else have we seemed to lost sight of that basic concept...? Hmmm...
well think about it, Ebay at 30k people for an automated server farm, really? I am surprised that they had a thousand.... I cant wrap my brain around banks with a back office of 10,000 people either....
I've written it a thousand times.
Consolidation OF (nearly) EVERY KIND is anathema to the human beans.
(Including the worst 'consolidation' ever on this part of the N.A. continent, that was the result of the War Between the States)'
The only possible immediate gain for any entity that engages in transactions with millions or even hundreds of thousands of us, is for the new entity ----formed by the amalgamation----- to eliminate duplicative services. And "administration" is the very first part of the P $ L that can be affected to the positive side, within months of the conclusion of the merger.
In a world of no growth or negative growth spurred----if not caused by--- these consolidations, the layoffs can only hurt the human beans, which benefits accrue to the new entity. There is a direct, immutable, and powerful phenomenon that takes from the many who are now 'set free' and gives to the architects and their henchmen in the financial institutions, lawyers, accountants and other financial tripe.
Do you want to speak like a CEO or investment banker? Do you want to include words and phrases like strategic focus, respective growth, targeted investment opportunities, sustainable shareholder value, captive customer relationships, barriers to entry, and synergistic strategies in every sentence? Do you have no idea what any of this means? Then you need the new and improved Bullshit Generator app for all your electronic devices. Buy it now on eBay for $99.99. Pay with PayPal and get a 10% discount on purchases of three or more. Don’t even think about getting to the executive level without one.
I knew it, the minute they split they'll be looking like ripe M&A targets for someone else
so now bloomberg says it was their actually intention to stop earning a honest living, put on some fishnets and go golddigging for new husbands
uncle carl sure can work his eyebrows, to turn a working company into a willing whore
who's gonna buy? Alibaba? or a leveraged Amazon?
paypal has value and will fetch a pretty penny, I bet paypal is where all the current ebay board members transferred their stakes to
but to a potential buyer, ebay only has equity and asset value, that's hardly worth shit in itself(digital prime location is not scarce or unique like a physical prime location, and human talent is easily available for the right price now that ebay has become an obvious leaky boat), and even the brand value is questionable, short of Alibaba who might be interested in an western shopfront just for the sake of it, and even that's a big IF, I don't see anyone who can realise much value from acquiring ebay. Unless uncle carl is able to activist some moron to buy ebay just to generate more M&A 'growth'?
which of those companies has uncle carl got a dial-in with? I bet he's working his eyebrows on that next leg already... if he still has stake in ebay after this that is
Ebay sucks now. You cannot sell anything without paying a fee for everything, listing fee, selling fee, shipping fee, etc etc.
Screw that, I will go to Craigslist for the USA and https://carousell.co/ in singapore.
Have rarely found an item I needed on ebay I couldn't buy cheaper from a normal retailer on the net, since 1999. The few times I buy, I find the exact same item cheaper elsewhere within a week. If it wasn't for APMEX under spot gold deals, I wouldn't go near the site.
not sure what you mean about apmex. under spot gold deals?
right now 1oz 2014 gold eagle direct from apmex: $1288 check price / $1333 credit card price
right now 1oz 2014 gold eagle from apmex sold by apmex on ebay: $1333
I don't use paypal and it seems e-bay only takes it for payment, other than another scam they use for deferred payment.