After selling its Stubhub ticket marketplace and online classifieds business, eBay appears to be ready to jettison yet another division: eBay Korea.
There had been reports since the spring that eBay was looking for a buyer for its Korean marketplace, and on Tuesday, it issued a statement acknowledging it was considering options.
eBay’s Korean marketplace is more like Amazon than eBay.com in one way, at least: it sells items itself (first-party sales) in addition to third-party sales, as EcommerceBytes reported 3 years ago.
The divestitures, the result of fierce pressure from activist investors in 2019, make eBay a much smaller company. (We don’t recall an accounting of what eBay has done with the proceeds, presumably it continues to buy back shares to return it to investors, but has it also reinvested any into the Marketplace business?)
Here’s what eBay had to say in a statement on Tuesday:
“eBay has initiated a process to explore, review and evaluate a range of strategic alternatives for its Korea business. The company is considering options that would maximize value for its shareholders and create future growth opportunities for the business.
“eBay does not intend on making further public announcements regarding the strategic review unless and until the Board has approved a course of action requiring disclosure.”
During John Donahoe (old Ebay CEO), Ebay acquired So Many other businesses, I started making a list of them up on Donahoe’s wikipedia page. Apparently this was an embarrassing humiliating thing they wanted kept secret because after I hit #102 on the list, they erased it.
Corporations are NOT our friend, never will be.
eBays dream of becoming Amazon is slowly dieing – and we all here can say loudly “we told you so”.
eBays one and only savior is MP and everyone knows it. Without it, eBay will never be more then Craigslist on steroids.
eBay cant handle owing more then 1 company – they hire poor choices, the exhibit shoddy behavior, are untrustworthy and are hated by their own customers.
eBays customer service level is D atm, they clame COVID – but the truth is – that eBay knows that most will just “give up and go away” when they have an issue and thats what they REALLY want.
If MP is such a big part of the company, why cant you reach them by phone? Makes no sense unless you are the sleeping GRIFF or one of the Walmart dopes.
Paypal was a better company then eBay ever was as was Stubhub – they MADE money with having to resort to stealing (Paypal was bad in some ways but at least they were people you could deal with).
Classifieds was a loosing business (no integration into eBay.com) and therefore it had to go.
eBay Korea? if its run as badly as eBay US is …….
Maybe they can jettison eBay Botswana next …..