Meg Whitman will soon step down as chief executive of EBay Inc., the online auction company that went from wobbly startup to multibillion-dollar household name in her 10-year tenure.
Whitman, 51, will be succeeded by John Donahoe, 47, who has been heading EBay’s core auction and e-commerce businesses. The transition will happen March 31, the company said Wednesday.
Whitman said she will remain on EBay’s board of directors.
Her departure comes as the online auctioneer faces slowing growth and disappointing returns from its US$2.6 billion gamble on the Internet phone service Skype.
In October, the company reported its first quarterly loss since 1999 after a US$900 million write-down in the value of Skype, which it purchased in 2005 for $2.6 billion.
Ebay’s slowing revenue growth and the Skype acquisition may have helped Whitman decide “it might be the right time for a change,” said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst for Standard & Poor’s.
“It just seems like her legacy has been sealed and she has done everything she can do,” Kessler said. “It’s time to move on.”
Kessler said EBay has been outmanoeuvred in recent years by Amazon.com Inc. But he gives Whitman high marks for building one of the Internet’s best-known brands and most profitable companies.
Investors have been buzzing about the possibility that Whitman might resign since last summer when she began spending more of her time campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“With humour, smarts and unflappable determination, Meg took a small, barely known online auction site and helped it become an integral part of our lives. We’re all enormously grateful that Meg dedicated herself to stewarding EBay through its 10 most formative years,” said Pierre Omidyar, EBay’s founder and chairman.
When Whitman joined EBay in 1998, the company employed 30 people and had revenues of $86 million that year. The company now employs 15,000 people and had $5.97 billion in revenues last year.
Donahoe came to EBay in 2005 from Bain & Co., where he had previously worked with Whitman.
