Filed under: Management, eBay (EBAY)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting [subscription required] that eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman could be preparing to retire, possibly within the next few weeks.

John Donahoe, who has been president of eBay’s auction business since 2005, is sought to be the most likely candidate to succeed Ms. Whitman, who has been CEO for nearly 10 years.

Overall, Ms. Whitman has done an admirable job as CEO of the company, as evidenced by the stock’s strong performance since its IPO. But over the past five years, shares of eBay have provided essentially flat performance as the company struggles to find ways to deal with slowing growth in the auction business.

Shortly after joining the company, Whitman said that no CEO should stay more than 10 years because a fresh perspective is needed at that point. With her 10 year anniversary approaching in March, she could be staying true to her word.

If she does in fact retire, look for her to stay active working on the presidential bid of Mitt Romney, whom she worked with at Bain Capital.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.