eBay fourth quarter conference call upbeat and positive

Meg had the enviable position of talking to investors shortly after releasing better than expected financial results. Apart from allowing that overall margin is down slightly and that Skype has room to grow and deliver more for eBay's bottom line the fourth quarter was cracker.

The worries that Google Checkout might impact the PayPal business were unfounded. In fact it's possible that the hype about Checkout went some way to increasing PayPals business as reality of PayPal's superior flexibility for both consumers and merchants bore fruit.

Finally something to look forward to - with the move of Philipp Justus from Germany and arrival to eBay of Michael Linton from bestbuy, Meg promises some innovative ideas will be coming to revitalise the auction format on eBay. It's true - we do love the fun side of business!

All in all as predicted much more upbeat than the third quarter's conference call, a strong performance with good results is always sweeter to swallow.

PR scoop for eBay.com in management move

Nichola Sharpe, eBay UK Senior PR Manager, is to move to San Jose next month to give eBay.com PR a boost. Nichola previously at Freud Communications has been with eBay for two and a half years.

Nichola has worked tirelessly at her time with eBay in the UK and will be greatly missed. One of her latest projects has been overseeing eBay's involvement with the Get Safe Online campaign to educate Internet users how surf the net securely.

Following Meg Whitman's declaration that eBay "increasingly looks to its foreign offices for rising stars" and that they intend to "bring international talent to San Jose" it's no surprise that a key member of the UK team has been poached by the US. The UK's loss will be a huge gain to the team in San Jose!

Vanessa Canzini formerly Senior Media Relations Manager at BAA is expected to join eBay as Nichola's replacement.

Whitman embroiled in homophobia

We all know politicians a) Don't stay in office forever, and b) are fickle - both points are rather salient today. President G W Bush won't be in office much longer and Mitt Romney is raising funds to run for office. Everyone can change their mind, but for a politician it seems almost second nature to take a diametrically opposite viewpoint.

Fifteen year ago Mitt Romney told a group of Log Cabin Republicans he'd support gays more vehemently than Ted Kennedy ever did. Today Mitt Romney is saying that he's doing everything in his power to stop gays from attaining the same basic rights all Americans enjoy.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with eBay... well The Washington Post reports Romney raised $6.5 million towards his presidential politicking campaign in a single day. Those dialling for dollars included none other than eBay Chief Exec Meg Whitman.

Now the thing is should or shouldn't Meg publicly support a politician? After all every individual has the right to their private political persuasions don't they? Next was she wise to do so in such a public manner, especially with such a controversial character.

As Kevin Madden, Romney's spokes person said "In a presidential campaign, it's one thing to talk about your organizational strength but it's another to showcase it" and equally it's one thing to have political affiliations and another to have them publicised.

Meg Whitman reveals management strategy

Over the weekend Cisco announced plans to deploy more San Jose executives to India. Cisco plan to set up a globalisation centre with executives drawn from their top management based in San Jose, from acquisitions and competitors worldwide and of course those already based in India. Many other companies are following suit moving key members of their management team abroad to bridge cultural and language barriers and cement relationships with workers around the world.

At eBay though Meg Whitman is doing the opposite as revealed in a phone interview from Shanghai (reported by Associated Press). Whilst other companies are increasingly deploying US home bred talent abroad eBay is scouring it's worldwide management team and bringing the crème de la crème back to San Jose

What we're trying to do is to bring international talent to San Jose, not the other way around, but you have to have a leadership team that's global, and that's what we aspire to be.

Management moves already made public are Philipp Justus from Germany who moves to run the auction business, and Michael Linton who will oversee Motors, Stores/Shops, Express and ProStores. Gautam Thakar (formerly Country Manager, eBay India Marketplace) will become Senior Director of International Marketing reporting to Lorrie Norrington and Alex Kazim returns to eBay from Skype, demonstrating Meg Whitman's commitment to a management team with International experience.

eBay had their fingers badly burnt in 2006 with their withdrawal from China and no doubt Jack Ma's diagnosis still smarts - "Professional managers are making their bosses in the US happy, not the Chinese users." Meg Whitman's epitaph as "China's worst businesswoman ever" will not be forgotten quickly.

By scouring the world for leaders and most importantly non US personnel that understand the rationale and culture of their own continents and countries, to bring their talent to San Jose, Whitman is putting a formidable corporate strategy in place. To truly run a global business successfully you have to go local, just think of HSBC's adverts with the focus as "The world's local bank". It may be too late in China, but her current foresight in setting up a truly global management team may not only be her smartest move to date but could be her lasting legacy to eBay.

Why eBay was right to buy Skype

The San Francisco Chronicle interviews Meg Whitman, eBay's President. The changes to eBay's shop listings last year were responsible for the fall in their share price, she buys and sells on eBay herself, more female CEOs are a generation away. All cute, nothing very surprising.

Except down the bottom, amongst the implied criticism of eBay's controversial $2.6bn purchase of the online telephone system Skype last year, there's a rather telling paragraph:

We think in some ways that communication can be to the marketplace what payments was the marketplace. What PayPal did was it accelerated the velocity of trade in the marketplace. ... There's protection to you by closing that transaction online. But if it actually increases the velocity of trade on eBay or off, then our users are better off and we will ultimately be better off.

This, in direct response to the question, if you let buyers and sellers talk directly, won't they cut eBay out of the deal, signals a massive about-turn in policy by eBay, which in recent years has tried to restrict direct, off-site communication between buyers and sellers, encouraging trading partners to keep more and more correspondence on-site.

But it's more significant than that. Paypal are currently in the processing of rolling out their Paypal Virtual Terminal; just like a physical credit card machine in a shop, this will allow merchants to take credit cards over the phone. Suddenly, putting Skype buttons on your eBay listings looks like it might make sense.

Far from being the crazy waste of money it's been portrayed as, eBay's purchase of Skype turns out to be a truly forward-looking move by the company. A third of UK adults now have a Paypal account; it's a fairly safe bet that most of those accounts are largely used for eBay. But with eBay television ads bringing the site to the attention of an ever-widening audience, what are we to do with those people who just don't want to put their credit card number "onto the internet"? Easy: we give them the option to seamlessly hand it over to eBay merchants with Skype. Just as Paypal brought internet card processing to sellers who wouldn't otherwise be able to accept it, Skype will bring internet card purchasing to buyers who wouldn't otherwise find it acceptable.

Smart move, that.

News from Gordon Brown

More news from Gordon Brown today! He has announced “I am delighted to be hosting the inaugural meeting of Britain’s International Business Advisory Council and to be following this with a summit meeting with the leading figures in British business. We will be discussing how business and government can work together to make the case for globalisation and how to make globalisation work better.”

The Government is committed to working closely with and listening to business leaders and this includes Meg Whitman of eBay who he is with now

Meg Whitman meets with Gordon Brown

Back in March it was announced that the Chancellor was establishing the International Business Advisory Council for the UK comprising some of the world’s leading business people including Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay. The Council will advise the Chancellor and the Trade Secretary on global business to ensure that the UK continues to be one of the top locations for international commerce.

The outcome of this meeting will affect all UK eBayers in some shape or form, if in no other way than that Meg Whitman is influencing government policy. For eBay sellers it's good to know we're all being represented at the very highest level of government and whilst it may take some time for details of the meeting to become available we'll be watching with close interest and bring you the story as it happens.