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 Donahoe told Reuters on Wednesday he has spoken with as many as 16
of the 20 most-active shareholders in eBay, and most favored hanging
on to the fast-growing PayPal payments unit. He did not say what
percentage of the company's shares were held by the investors who
agreed with his resistance to Icahn.
"I met with 15, 16 of our top 20 active investors, have engaged back
and forth in dialogue with them," Donahoe told Reuters in an
interview.
"The majority of them understand that they're stronger together," he
said. PayPal had become the preferred online payment method of the
online marketplace's customers when eBay acquired it for $1.5
billion in 2002.
The top 20 shareholders hold a combined 42 percent of eBay shares,
according to Thomson Reuters. Its top shareholder, eBay founder
Pierre Omidyar, holds 8.4 percent of the shares and has repeatedly
expressed support for eBay's plan to stay intact.
Icahn owns just over 2 percent of the eBay. Management has sparred
relentlessly with him since January, when the company announced that
the pugnacious billionaire had made an unsolicited proposal that
eBay hive off PayPal. Until now, neither side had addressed the
question of how other investors viewed a prospective spinoff.
Icahn was not immediately available for comment. Earlier on
Wednesday, he said corporate governance at eBay was the worst he had
ever seen, the latest volley in a feud that has included several
press releases by Icahn and television appearances.
Icahn has sent letters to shareholders accusing two eBay directors
of conflicts of interest, and calling the board dysfunctional. He
has proposed two new directors.
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In the past, eBay has considered spinning off the
multibillion-dollar payments service. But the company concluded that
PayPal would lose synergies with the overall e-commerce business if
it were an independent unit.
Donahoe suggested that activist shareholders can play a constructive
role, under some circumstances.
"If you were to look at a spectrum of activists, you see a different
playbook, you see different approaches," Donahoe said.
A case in point, Donahoe said, is Ralph Whitworth, co-founder of
activist investment fund Relational Investors LLC, whom Donahoe
praised for "not playing it out in the media" prior to winning a
seat on Hewlett-Packard Co's board. Whitworth is currently chairman
of HP.
(Reporting by Phil Wahba and Nadia
Damouni in New York)
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