EBay CEO Whitman Steps Back from Business Role

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Meg Whitman, one of SiliconValley’s best-known executives, said in an interview that herplanned retirement, announced earlier on Wednesday, would freeher to focus more on philanthropy and politics.

This year, Whitman said she would remain on the boards ofeBay Inc, Procter & Gamble Co and DreamWorksAnimation SKG Inc, and become more involved in runningher family’s foundation with her husband, a neurosurgeon.

She also said she will continue campaigning this year onbehalf of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, aformer colleague when both worked at consulting firm Bain & Co."I will continue to help my long-time friend, Mitt," she said.

In a surprisingly open race, the former Massachusettsgovernor is in a statistical tie with Sen. John McCain for thelead in Florida, where the next big primary contest for theRepublican nomination takes place.

Whitman said she was still considering her options for 2009and beyond and declined to comment further.

On March 31, Whitman is set to hand off the leadership toCEO-in-waiting John Donahoe, now head of eBay’s mainstaymarketplaces business. In 2005, Whitman recruited Donahoe, aformer employee of hers at Bain, to join eBay management.

Whitman said she plans to play an advisory role to Donahoethrough the rest of 2008, working at a reduced salary. Whitmanis estimated to be worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes,which ranked her number 361 in a survey of 400 billionaires.

Earlier, on a conference call with Wall Street investors todiscuss eBay’s 2007 year-end results, she said many innovationsthat now allow hundreds of millions of people to shop onlinemade their debut on eBay under her watch.

Whitman said helping some 1.3 million people now earn moneyon eBay, the world’s largest e-commerce site and now a $7.7billion annual revenue company, was one of her proudestaccomplishments over a decade on the job.

"I will miss … the chance to help people launchbusinesses," Whitman told Reuters in an interview afterward.

Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest private employer, counts 1.4million employees in the United States and 1.9 millionworldwide in its network of discount stores. By contrast, mosteBay store operators work from home or in small businesses.

Her toughest time at eBay was in 1999, when, a year afterjoining the company, the eBay Web site faced repeated shutdownsthat ran on for several hours or days. She recalls with nervouslaughter how TV trucks camped outside eBay headquarters.

Another challenge was her decision to expand into Europeand Asia and then having to persevere when the companycontinued to lose money on the moves.

EBay is now the dominant e-commerce company in the UnitedStates, Germany and Britain — its three biggest markets — butthe company has struggled to keep pace with e-commerce rivalsin Japan and China, Asia’s biggest markets for e-commerce.

A third tricky moment, she said, came when eBay elected topay $1.5 billion in 2002 for online payments rival PayPal. Thevalue of the deal represented 8 percent of eBay’s stock marketcapitalization at that time.

PayPal is now the world’s largest online payments service,generating $563 million in revenue, or about 20 percent ofeBay’s fourth quarter total revenue of $2.18 billion.

(Editing by Braden Reddall)

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