By Ben Fox Rubin
EBay Inc. reiterated its opposition to activist investor Carl
Icahn's effort to break up the e-commerce company, saying its board
unanimously recommends shareholder vote against Mr. Icahn's board
nominees and break-up proposal.
Since taking a roughly 2% stake in eBay, Mr. Icahn has
aggressively pushed for a spinoff of the company's payment service
PayPal, nominated two representatives to the board and questioned
board members' objectivity. He said eBay is stifling PayPal's
growth and hurting its competitiveness against current and
potential rivals, including Apple Inc. and Google Inc.
But earlier this month, Mr. Icahn scaled back his ambitions on
spinning off the business, saying he would be satisfied with a
partial sale of PayPal to the public, allowing eBay to maintain
majority control of PayPal.
"We have evaluated carefully Mr. Icahn's proposal to spin off
PayPal," eBay's leadership said in a shareholder letter ahead of
its May 13 annual meeting. "We do not support it. Mr. Icahn's
proposal is not a new idea, and Mr. Icahn himself recently backed
away from supporting his own proposal."
While Mr. Icahn is moving away from his spinoff request, his
proposal to separate the unit and his two nominees for the board
will stay on the ballot at eBay's annual shareholder meeting.
A representative for Mr. Icahn wasn't immediately available for
comment.
Write to Ben Fox Rubin at ben.rubin@wsj.com
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