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EBay Cuts 7% of Workforce, Agrees to Standstill with Icahn

• x0x0 12y ago
  "They bought back a lot of shares, they added one of Icahn’s employees to the board, they are cutting costs -- those are the things investors care about more than the actual performance of the company," said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., who has the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock. Seeing it explained that way is amazing. Meanwhile, ebay is losing ground in ecommerce. But don't worry, Donahoe (and Icahn) got paid.
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Meanwhile, ebay is losing ground in ecommerce. But don't worry, Donahoe (and Icahn) got paid. Ebay is an abstraction about which no one actually cares fundamentally, they only care about it as a means to an end. If investors are getting paid (and a general stock buyback means more than those two got paid), they are getting what they care about out of eBay. Investors care about performance only as a means to get paid, not because they care about the abstraction that they are investing in independent of what it brings them.