Slashdot Mirror
Ebay Weighs Selling Off Businesses After Pressure From Activist Investors (cnn.com)
Ebay may be paving the way to auction off some of its businesses. The e-commerce company said Friday that it is initiating a strategic review of its assets, including ticket sales site StubHub and the Classifieds Group, after facing pressure from activist investors to spin off or sell these properties. From a report: Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.
Devin Wenig, Ebay's president and CEO, said in a statement Friday that these moves are the result of "two months" of dialogue between the company and investors. "The bottom line is that we all share common ground: We see tremendous opportunity ahead and want to see Ebay's full potential realized over the long-term," Wenig said. Last month, eBay announced a restructuring that would bring various regional marketplace units under one global leadership team.
"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.
What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.
The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...where I can find people selling old Cabbage Patch Dolls. Is that so hard?
"Ebay may be paving the way to auction off some of its businesses." I wonder which platform they'll use?
"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.
Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.
What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.
Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.
Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.
This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.
The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.
Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.
eBay is so frustrating. On one hand, a platform like eBay works best when it is a monopoly - when all the buyers and sellers are in the same place. On the other hand, the fact that they are a monopoly has made them into an awful, awful company.
I have used eBay for over 20 years. The overall experience today is worse than it was 20 years ago. I would go as far as to say that their last good improvement was probably made 15 years ago.
What is even more frustrating is that they continue to do absolutely stupid things, and they constantly introduce either bugs or degraded user experiences, which take months to then fix. And there's no way to even report those issues with the goal of getting a resolution.
Here's an example: I have a lot of "Saved Searches" set up - this is how I buy a lot of items (I look for collectibles). About 2 years ago, eBay for some reason decided that they would only show about 30 characters of the 80 character auction title in the email. What this means is that I get notifications of auctions which I then have to click through to their site to see what the auction actually is. I have stopped doing that long ago.
Then, they decided that when you perform the same search on their desktop site, they would limit the auction title to 50 characters instead of 80. So even there, I can't exactly tell what is being sold without clicking through to the auction.
My guess is that a VP is being paid bonuses on clickthrough metrics. Meanwhile I'm guessing that sales are down.
It sounds like things are about to get even worse now that the hedge fund wants its pound of flesh.
There is far less action on eBay than there was 20 years ago, probably due to the high fees (you're going to fork over about 13.4% of every sale, since final value fee is 10% and PayPal fee is 3.4%), and also due to the cost of shipping things greatly exceeding the value of the things being sold (try selling cross-border - you usually can't get away with anything less than $18 to send something to Canada, which sucks if you're selling items for less than $100). They were revolutionary when they first started, but now are just "meh".
"The bottom line is that we all share common ground: We see tremendous opportunity ahead and want to see Ebay's full potential realized over the long-term,"
It's obvious that this is nonsense.
What these actions are more likely to accomplish is a short-term cash inflow that can be turned into a short-term stock bubble which these "activist" (rofl) investors can use to sell off their stock and turn a profit.
I mean, how much more transparent can you play that game?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I just found out yesterday that they also own Proxibid, who does auctions but with a "soft ending." If anyone bids within the last 2 minutes, it resets the end date to 2 minutes and starts counting down from there again guaranteeing the highest price. In other words no sniping. I assumed the ONLY reason ebay wasn't implementing this is it was patented by them. NOPE. They own them. Their revenue would probably go up by 10% minimum if they implemented this and the sellers would be a lot happier. If they want money, do this!
For some reason people think Socialism and Capitalism is an all or nothing type of thing, which has to diametrically opposed to each other.
While the actual problem with these ideas isn't the philosophy but the implementation, and forces who actively break the spirit of the ideas.
The problem with capitalism today, is it is in a feedback loop where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. The richer you are the lower your interest rates are on a loan because you are considered a safer investment. The poorer you are the higher your interest rates, because you are a high risk. It is more expensive to be poor, so you have less money to save and use to get out the cycle. While when one is rich they have excess capital, which they just can reinvest and use to increase their profits.
This in itself isn't bad, however traditional capitalism, meant such reinvestment often would trickle down to the poorer people, because a reinvestment would go to hiring more workers to create more output. Or towards a better machine which would open up a new sector of the economy, However today there is too much in investing into investing. There is little trickle down, it is just feeding the top, and for the little good produced that the poor can afford will cause them to lose capital and feed the growth even further. Because this system is breaking down, there are some fixes that needs to be addressed. Additional government oversight (a Socialist idea) can be one of the fixes to the problem, before it goes further out of hand. Other options would need to find some other disruptive influence to change it. That would have just as much if not more consequences.
Now Socialism, there is the danger of the people in power, to abuse it for their own gains, Capitalism does have the advantage of the "Invisible hand", If there is a product that gets popular, then businesses will ramp up production to sell it, and/or charge a higher price for it. Once people stop wanting a product, then the company goes out of business or finds something else to sell. In a Communist (Strict Socialism) environment there will a power source telling you want you want and need to get. Hence that is why we have long bread lines. Because the communist state isn't prepped to meet demand, and may not have the right goods available for what the people need. Say every Monday there is bread, which everyone needs to get, so they are long lines, and on Tuesday it is cooking oil, which people may not need every week. To have a Pure Socialist government work correctly we will need an Altruistic government, and a lot of administration to make sure demand is being met.
I myself tend to favor capitalism, however we need to put in and sometime remove socialist elements in it, to make sure it is running smoothly and prevent huge dips and rises because a lot of people will be hurt from a big dip, and an artificial rise (Say from a fad) may cause too much over production and cause such a large dip.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just the fact that Republican morons conflate Socialism and Communism by itself is proof - they can't be educated because they don't want to be educated. Fuck em, make leather. Republicanism isn't useful, leather is. Pragmatism.
My sister was a big ebay user, both buying and selling, but has largely stopped both. The reason why was some "customers" would scam the sellers by taking the item, claiming some defect, and then threatening bad reviews if they didn't get a price reduction. It's shady and extortionist but there are people like that in the world. And Ebay backs them 100%. After a few cases of that she decided to stop selling anything there. That's a loss to both Ebay and it's legitimate customers. Multiply her experience by thousands and you get a declining platform.
Ah...to be "smart" like you but still be a complete and utter moron.
"Ebay may be paving the way to auction off some of its businesses." So they are getting into the construction biz now?
For some reason people think Socialism and Capitalism is an all or nothing type of thing, which has to diametrically opposed to each other.
While neither philosophy requires all-or-nothing implementation, they are at the core very much opposed to each other. A capitalist system must necessarily respect private property rights, and a socialist system by definition cannot.
The mistake people make is that the look at capitalism and see that it is a system under which the rich will grow richer. This is merely the outcome of any competitive game, where once you start to gain an advantage, it becomes easier gain further advantage. It's no different than a sporting team which has a history of winning championships having an easier time attracting players to come play for them. Fortunately, an economy is not a zero sum game. Even though the wealthiest people are more wealthy than ever before under capitalism, the value created is also enjoyed by those who are not as well off and they have an opportunity to sell their labor and accrue wealth, unlike previous periods in history where most people were slaves or serfs and had no rights to their own labor.
Socialism likes to promise a lot, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Marxist economic policies are nothing but disastrous. Central planning, price controls, the nationalization of private industry, and other policies typically employed under Communist or Marxist governments have a clear track record of failure. I think that even the major proponents of the ideology have realized this and now like to brag up what's often called Democratic Socialism and the Scandinavian countries that supposedly employ this system. Of course the dirty secrets are that these countries are not only strongly capitalist, but also have some of the freest markets in the whole world. The other dirty secret is that it isn't just the rich who pay heavily for the government services that those countries offer, but the middle class as well. In Denmark you barely need to be above the average income for the country before you're in the top marginal tax bracket. Never mind that there's VAT and other taxes beyond that.
There are some people who consider all of those "free" benefits to be great, but I don't think many of them realize the true cost. Certainly there are some who do, but I would never care to live under such a system. I believe that I can do a better job of making decisions for myself than can some government bureaucrat, and if I fuck up, then I've got no one but myself to blame for any actions I chose to take of my own accord.
Ebay needs to get rid of the Buy It Now feature entirely and go back to being a pure auction site. Furthermore, buyers need to be penalized for returning items they buy when everybody knows they're just trying to flip the item for a quick buck.
That sounds exactly like SJWs in comparison to real activists who might spend their lives on an issue and champion change not for immediate or personal benefit, but for the benefit of those who come after them, who they want to see have the rights they themselves were denied as well as a better future.
These 'Activist Investors' however, sound exactly like SJWs: putting personal benefit before communal benefit at the expense of all others. Any collateral benefits being accidental in the pursuit of their goals.
The problem with capitalism today, is it is in a feedback loop where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. The richer you are the lower your interest rates are on a loan because you are considered a safer investment. The poorer you are the higher your interest rates, because you are a high risk. It is more expensive to be poor, so you have less money to save and use to get out the cycle. While when one is rich they have excess capital, which they just can reinvest and use to increase their profits.
True, the rich are getting richer, but not at the expense of the poor.
If the poor were getting poorer, it would be better to be poor 50 years ago than to be poor today, right? But -- speaking for myself -- I'd much prefer to be poor today. The capitalist system has enabled the number of millionaires and billionaires to grow... but has also benefited the poor. Clothing, and food are all more affordable now than they used to be. Affordability of essentials is important to the poor. In 1950, food expense took up 1/3 of a household budget; now it's less than half that. And technology is now widely available to members of all social classes. Last year's billionaire smartphone (iPhone 6) is today's a middle class device.
And technology has enabled new businesses to form. That excess capital that funded eBay has allowed for thousands of small businesses to launch. That's a good thing for the lower class. On top of that, one of the billionaires created by eBay is giving it all away.
"lol socialism is 4 fags."
-by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01, 2019 @12:05PM
> You can use variations on that, such as having the winner only pay the next increment over the second highest bid instead of their actual amount, but the principle remains the same.
That's exactly what eBay does. You end the maximum you are willing to pay. You actually pay less than that - you pay only enough to be higher than the other bidder. In essence, eBay automatically bids for you, up the maximum bid you set.
There is no sniping, trying it doesn't work, if the bidders understand how eBay operates. Assuming all bidders understand how eBay works, everyone puts in their max price qnd the winner pays the minimum amount which wins. Sneaking it at the last second does you no good, because the other bidders already told eBay what their max is.
The thing is, some users do NOT understand how eBay works, or they haven't thought it through. They'll enter a bid lower than their max, planning to increase it later if needed. There's no need for that because eBay automatically bids for you, up to your maximum bid. People who failed to enter their actual maximum can get sniped.
Unfortunately, there is a second-order effect. Knowing that OTHER bidders may not behave rationally, it makes sense for you to try to snipe them. You couldn't snipe if everyone was being rational, but some people aren't, so that changes the rational strategy.
eBay's system is perfect theoretically - assuming rational bidders. Irrational bidders throw a monkey wrench into it.
Given irrational bidders exist, what eBay could do is say auctions end ten minutes after the last bid is received. The auction would continue for as long as the bidding continues to increase.
Kijiji was heavily advertised here and as such took over from Craigslist (mostly). Kijiji is a terrible experience that feels like EBay has forgotten about it and has let its worst employers run it as their penance.