

EBay Cuts 7% of Workforce, Agrees to Standstill with Icahn - dataminer
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-21/ebay-s-marketplace-struggles-as-it-faces-future-without-paypal.html

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       "They bought back a lot of shares, they added one of Icahn’s employees to 
       the board, they are cutting costs -- those are the things investors care 
       about more than the actual performance of the company," said Gil Luria, an 
       analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., who has the equivalent of a hold rating 
       on the stock.
    

Seeing it explained that way is amazing. Meanwhile, ebay is losing ground in
ecommerce. But don't worry, Donahoe (and Icahn) got paid.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Meanwhile, ebay is losing ground in ecommerce. But don't worry, Donahoe (and
> Icahn) got paid.

Ebay is an abstraction about which no one actually cares fundamentally, they
only care about it as a means to an end. If investors are getting paid (and a
general stock buyback means more than those two got paid), they are getting
what they care about out of eBay.

Investors care about performance only as a means to get paid, not because they
care about the abstraction that they are investing in independent of what it
brings them.

