Does eBay's Board Show its Future Priorities?
eBay's board is continuing to see some turnover.
eBay's board makeup has traditionally signaled its priorities. Elliott and Starboard activist investors wanted board seats, new leadership, and a more focused marketplace-only organization. That happened.
Elliott recently vacated its two Board seats. Pierre Omidyar is now an emeritus board member.
Who were the replacements?
Mohak Shroff: SVP of Engineering at LinkedIn. Future interview for the CTO role? I think Jamie realizes that in an innovation-driven world, not having true engineers to help him on the board is a disadvantage relative to other Silicon Valley companies. Could this predict major changes to eBay's platform and/or help the company with product/technology reorganization? The strategy could be right on, but if change happens too slowly, it won't matter.
Carol Hayles: Recently with CIT, leading change to a US-focused bank. I don't have any special insight here, other than to say that post-PayPal, financing and payments should play a big part in eBay's future. It could indicate a particular focus here.
Does the board indicate anything about eBay's destiny? What do you think? I am most interested to see if there are more changes to come in the product and technology organizations, and their relationship to the business teams.
Miles Thomas chimed in with some perspective from the UK, adding that there have been “lower down changes also, in Europe. UK head Rob Hatrell (ex Accenture, Tesco) moved up to head all of Europe, with a member of his team Murray Lambrell promoted into the vacated role. (Source websites: Tamebay, Retail Gazette UK).”
When I posed the general question of what do folks think about eBay’s future, Adam Katlin responded “I think it's always a good move to bring in top notch engineering talent from a company such as LinkedIn. But what does eBay stand for these days? When you hear eBay, what comes to mind? Reselling some old stuff? Quality customer service, sometimes. They're grandfathered into the conversation around big tech names, but at a tier below. What is their brand?”
It will be interesting to see how eBay self-identifies. How do they define themselves? What does that mean in 2020 and moving forward?
