Word: whitmans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...really does use the cramped space--filled with eBay trinkets and pictures of his wife (an Obama campaign fundraiser) and four children (all basketball players and eBay users)--as his primary office. That visibility and openness has earned Donahoe, brought in by Meg Whitman from Bain & Co. three years ago and promoted to replace her in March, respect from employees and customers alike. The conference room where Donahoe holds meetings has a small DENNIS THE MENACE nameplate on the door. He explains the eBay tradition whereby colleagues name your conference room after a cartoon character. "It's because I tend...
...stopped growing. It's still unclear how badly the credit crisis and buying slowdown will affect an e-commerce value site like eBay, which does half its business outside the U.S. During the 2001 recession, eBay's marketplace continued to thrive because of its Web dominance and discounted goods. Whitman at the time even crowed that "eBay is to some extent recession-proof...
...Whitman, a.k.a. Blondie, her eBay nickname, had an impressive 10-year run, but when eBay's slowdown began, she tried to buy her way out of the problem, acquiring companies like PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com and StubHub to generate growth. Many were profitable but distracting, as problems like lack of trust and shoddy search technology continued to ail the auction site, the main revenue driver. "Meg was reluctant to expand things like customer service because it would eat into eBay's margins," says Jeffrey Lindsay, senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein...
That's why Donahoe, a Whitman hire at both eBay and Bain, where he spent more than 20 years, eventually becoming its CEO, carried out a series of rapid-fire changes. He emphasized, for example, fixed-price sales over auctions and got his mitts on the hands-off approach that has defined eBay for years. Many wonder whether the 12-year-old auction giant will emerge with the same DNA once Dennis the Menace departs. "Donahoe has introduced more changes in the last six months than we've seen in the last six years," says Jack Sheng, chief executive...
...Donahoe's tough love comes in. First, he's acquiring companies like Bill Me Later, a payment system, and Danish classified-ad sites that have synergy with eBay's brand. He's also re-evaluating whether to spin off Skype, the voice-over-IP phone-system acquisition that was Whitman's biggest mistake, not to mention a $1.4 billion write-off. eBay overpaid for a company that doesn't directly benefit the core business. Donahoe also launched a new search platform to better catalog the 120 million live listings...