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eBay to Sell Korean Marketplace for $3.6 Billion

Ina Steiner
eBay
eBay to Sell Korean Marketplace for $3.6 Billion

Reuters is reporting that eBay has found a buyer for its Korean marketplace, part of the downsizing of eBay Inc. that resulted from a campaign by activist investors that began in January 2019.

Citing Euromonitor, the wire report said eBay Korea is the country’s third-largest ecommerce company with its Gmarket, Auction, and G9 platforms.

Retailer Shinsegae Group’s E-Mart Inc and web portal operator Naver will buy eBay Korea, according to Reuters (via Yahoo Finance), which noted that E-Mart informed regulators it had entered a binding bid that had not been finalized.

After the ouster of eBay’s CEO in September 2019, eBay capitulated to the pressure campaign from Elliott Management and Starboard Value and sold StubHub to viagogo for $4.05 billion in cash in February 2020, and it is in the process of selling its classifieds unit in a deal complicated by regulatory oversight and now valued at $12.7 billion.

eBay has also changed the composition of its Board, including replacing its Chairman and seeing the retirement of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

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Ina Steiner
Ina Steiner
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.

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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.

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2 thoughts on “eBay to Sell Korean Marketplace for $3.6 Billion”

  1. Funny how they keep downsizing Ebay as per the campaign that Elliott started against them, but part of that campaign was to spend that money on improving and fixing their platform so that more sellers would use it and also have more listings. But when it has come to that part of the campaign Ebay has completely abandoned that part of the agreement and I do not see Elliott doing any complaining about it at all. That tells me that they now realize that the cost to fix their platform is not even close to being cost effective, so instead they continue to sell off pieces of Ebay and use the money to repurchase Ebay stock which artificially inflates the stock price which is the only way they have managed to keep it in the 60’s per share price.

    I will lay odds that they are selling off Korea Ebay because the Korean government would not allow them to force all of the Sellers into Mangled Payments so they could not control their businesses and cash flow depending on their needs. Truthfully I am surprised that China allowed them to do it, but I am sure there is some type of kickback to China in the deal since they have so many partnerships with the Chinese Government that they still try to hide as they know it will come back to haunt them.

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