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Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

There are rumors floating around, coming from Wall Street that shortly after the PayPal spinoff, eBay will be bought out.

Nobody can say for sure it these rumors are true, but it WOULD be interesting. The two most talked about purchasers would be Yahoo or Alibaba. Others speculate that Etsy, Google or Microsoft could also be in the running. And a few people believe that eBay will be purchased by a private equity firm.

It would actually make sense for Yahoo or Alibaba to purchase eBay. Alibaba, because they are expanding already in America an desperately want to expand their holdings around the world. Yahoo makes sense because of the synergy between their search engine and eBay.

Somehow I don't see Etsy buying eBay, I just don't. Given Google's previous statements about not wanting to be in the online auction business, I don't see it happening, but who knows? And Microsoft? I don't see how it fits with their other businesses, but they undoubtedly have the cash to buy eBay if they so choose.

he ONE THING that frightens me is a sale to a private equity firm. They are NOTORIOUS for making major changes to businesses they purchase. Fees would undoubtedly increase, security could be stepped up and who knows what else could happen?

Keep in mind that these are just RUMORS, there is NO official announcement that eBay is considering selling itself.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I definitely see Alibaba jumping on the purchase of eBay. I have no idea how they would implement both websites to work together though.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I don't know that they would try to integrate the platforms any more than they integrated TaoBao with Alibaba. My thought was, would this give Chinese sellers an even BIGGER edge? They already have the edge on price and the government subsidizes their EMS postage costs. If eBay was owned by Alibaba, they could decide to give them an edge in their listing rankings as well.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

If there are rumors, then someone already let the cat out of the bag. These things usually having some weight to them....and I would say Alibaba is the purchaser. They are most likely already having talks regarding the purchase. Does this mean I can buy phakes and sell them now? :juggle:

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Considering that Carl Ichan was involved in making the eBay/PayPal split a reality, I wouldn't be surprised if there was another deal in the works from the beginning, or at least some interest in a deal. That COULD be where the rumors are coming from and it WOULD make sense.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

The typical buyer (someone who buys a few items online a year) would find eBay MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to buy from than Alibaba. Alibaba could purchase eBay as a way to expand and directly market to these types of buyers with their Chinese sellers.

IMO, eBay's user interface and overall BUYER experience is 100% better than Alibaba.

:bounce:

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

True, but Alibaba is not a retail site and they don't do direct sales. They are a site that introduces buyers to wholesale suppliers. AliExpress is for smaller quantity buyers, but it is still wholesale.

If Alibaba takes over eBay, I don't see them making a lot of changes. But they likely WOULD market it is a business opportunity to Chinese wholesalers.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

eBay to Alibaba makes most sense, but my suspicion is that it would further cement eBay's reputation as the place to buy cheap plastic chinese ⊗⊗⊗⊗ stuff, and make it even more uncompetitive vs. Amazon. Also if Alibaba bought out eBay and started marketing it in China to sell direct to US consumers, they will be under a TON of pressure by non-chinese brand makers for selling ⊗⊗⊗⊗ stuff, because they won't be able to argue that they're just a marketplace anymore.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

There's just too many pitfalls integrating the two at least until they owned it for a few years. I mean think about it...every time someone got sold a chinese ⊗⊗⊗⊗, they would conjure up conspiracy theories that Alibaba condones selling of ⊗⊗⊗⊗ on eBay because they favor Chinese sellers.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Well considering Etsy's market valuation is just over a billion, and eBay's market cap is 71 billion, it's not going to happen unless they partner with a deep pocket partner (yahoo?)

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

EBAY CSR: Sir, where did you purchase these items?

EBAY Seller: Alibaba, your parent company

EBAY CSR: Yeah, these are probably knock offs. We have indefinitely suspended your account. You can no longer sell on EBAY but you can still buy whatever the hell you want. Have a nice day!

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Ohhhh.. didn't even think about that. They would have to put something in place that would allow documents from "verified sellers" on Alibaba to pass eBay's BS system.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I wonder if Aspkin has enough money in his bank account to buy Ebay......

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

jeffweico - you mentioned these are rumors. Where did you hear these? have you read anything? Just curious what source these rumors are coming from and if I can read those myself.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I can chip in £5 if he is a bit short. Just want 10% of the company :thumb:

Is there a link to these rumours? It would be ironic if eBay did get bought by Alibaba considering the history of the two companies.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

A friend of mine is a trader on the NYSE. He knows I am heavily involved with eBay. He told me that there was a rumor of an eBay buyout in late 2014, and that recently the rumors have re-surfaced. He told me that some high level people from Alibaba have recently toured eBay HQ and that some people from Bain Capital have recently been there as well.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

That is why ali wouldn't integrate with eBay...because they will be sued into oblivion by us vero rights holders if they were integrated, or they would have to police them for ⊗⊗⊗⊗ which will kill their Chinese business.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing! I can definitely see them getting bought out now with the separation, but hopefully nothing major changes.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I hope Google buy it

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I have a old friend who works for ebay and they have 2 warehouses that are built on the west and east end of the country in the US. It's to provide faster shipping for Chinese sellers due to the long wait.

There is a big change but he did not mention anything else to me or else he could lose the job. But from what I understood they will try to get rid of North American sellers since our prices are to high for customers and the Chinese will make all the money. There is a reason why paypal split as well. They won't tell you the big picture until it will happen. Amazon is ranked #1 and they want their customers back.

Google already pulled the plug last year on ebay for horrible SEO work done to the site. Amazon has so much traffic it makes ebay compete with etsy at this point.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Don't make the mistake of thinking Aliexpress is wholesale. You see the same Aliexpress sellers selling the same products on Ebay for often the same price.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Prices aren't the same if you buy in bulk.....

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Rumors! LOL!

The truth is...

Somebody's always trying to buy somebody else these days.

Badly run companies are the most popular targets for takeovers, and I think we'll all agree EB is a VERY badly run company.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

The reason for the PayPal split was Carl Ichan, an activist investor. He specializes in buying companies and breaking them up, making a profit by selling off the pieces. But recently, he just buys 5% of a company and makes threats. eBay caved, but to be fair, a lot of other investors were saying the same thing, that they would be worth more as two separate companies.

There really is nothing sinister in any of this - it is all about money, plain and simple. If eBay gets an offer that makes sense, they will take it. If not, then a buyout won't happen.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

If Ebay is sold, it is so large and prolific that it will have to pass regulatory approval. I have doubts that some of these large E-commerce companies like Google, Yahoo, & Alibaba would survive antitrust scrutiny.

My money, if ebay is really sold, is on private equity. I would not be surprised it this was another joint Berkshire Hathaway/3G capital venture. But Jeff is right about one thing: if they do go that route there will be some significant changes that probably won't benefit us.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Really? And how did you become an expert on such matters?

Did you here Comcast recently purchased Time Warner Cable?

eBay will be sold if it makes sense to the shareholders/owners.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

You make it too easy, GhostofAmazon. The Comcast acquisition of Time Warner never happened. It failed for the exact reasons I stated above. The DOJ sued Comcast for antitrust violations blocking the merger and Comcast abandoned it as a result. Thank you for thinking you were contradicting my reasoning but instead providing one of the best case studies to back up my point.

Also learn the difference between the words hear and here. Then learn that you don't have to quote text that is directly above your text.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I stand corrected.

I'll eat my crow now.

My only defense is that I do not trust our government to do the right thing. I'm happy to hear that in at least one example, I was incorrect.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I just need to know whose @ss were gonna be kissing in order to keep selling on Ebay!!!!

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Charter made the bid for TWC at $55bn and was approved this week.

Get it together kids.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Yeap and these rumors came out to light ending 2014 Alibaba group the most likely to buy Ebay! if this happens, some things will change I think ebay become more powerful.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

This is becoming a habit :lol:

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Alibaba buying eBay...great...influx of goods into the market...

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Alibaba buying eBay may not survive regulatory process but I don't see why a Yahoo/eBay merger wouldn't. Think about it... Yahoo/eBay combined wouldn't be dominant in any one thing. At best they'd be a poor #2 to a dominant Google in the search business and a poor #2 to a dominant Amazon in eCommerce business. There would be no risk of a Yahoo/eBay gaining monopoly in any sector of the market.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Yeah, but eBay being bought out by someone with deep pockets who can leverage their still huge user base and fixing the f'ups they've made since 2007 just makes too much sense for it not to happen once it gets separated from Paypal. eBay is sliding vs. Amazon and the gap is growing bigger.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

I don't see Alibaba buying eBay. (Sorry for everyone who wants a free market to sell phakes)

Google would be the most logical play but that would be at odds with the PayPal split because they would make Google Wallet a verified payment platform. Maybe Apple to integrate ApplePay. My speculation is that a company will buy it mostly to integrate their own newer payment platform.

Personally I think Yahoo has the best chance of a merger. Both overall are dated and struggling and in need life.

Maybe you get Facebook or Tencent or some dark horse. You never know maybe even a Berkshire Hathaway or something like that. At this point it is all speculation. Once I see some public leaks come out then heat up the speculation.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Not to mention, Yahoo has been interested in eCommerce for a long time. Many of you probably never heard of it, but Yahoo started its own eBay alternative site in 1998. They actually still run it in Hong Kong, as well as a few other parts of the world, although the western sites closed down in 2007 and 2008. I'm sure they would jump at the opportunity to own the site they tried and failed to emulate.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

Yahoo I think sees eBay similar to them both in need of new life. So I understand the thought process. Like I said before I think the biggest upside to purchasing eBay would be a company that already has a online payment platform that they can integrate into the site. Google Wallet or Apple Pay for example.

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

@Volgeltron - and using ApplePay or GoogleWallet, how much heat compared to using PayPal would there be? (I have never used either so cannot comment)

Re: Wall Street Rumors say eBay is About to be Sold
 

That's the point they aren't huge. Having them as a primary payment option on eBay could be a huge boost to adoption.

Honestly, I have no idea as to how much "heat" there will be. Could be like Amazon Payments for all I know.

I used Google years ago when it was Google Checkout not really in the past 4-5 years. I never had any problems but I used it more for personal bulk orders as a PayPal alternative.