NEG Meg The Series

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg Whitman news archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”
Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

NEG Meg The Series Episodes

NEG Meg The Series 1998

CEO Employment Letter between eBay and Meg Whitman
January 16 1998

• “eBay, Inc. (the “Company” or “eBay”) is pleased to offer you a position as Chief Executive Officer, at a salary, payable twice per month, which is equivalent to a yearly salary of $175,000.00. In addition, you will be eligible for an annual bonus up to $100,000.00 solely at the discretion of the Board of Directors.”
• “You will also be entitled to the benefits that ebay customarily makes available to employees in positions comparable to yours and it will be recommended to the Board of Directors that you be granted an option for the purchase of 800,000 shares of the Company’s Common Stock.”

Women on the Move
Deeanne McClain, August 24 1998

• “Meg Whitman has been named the new CEO of eBay, the rapidly growing online personal trading company. Whitman comes to eBay from Hasbro Inc.’s Preschool Division and is expected to lead eBay to the next level of success, building upon the company’s leadership position in the one-to-one online trading market.”

EBay Suspends Fraud Suspect
December 14 1998

• “suspended a user who is under investigation for cheating customers out of as much as US$100,000, according to a report in the latest issue of Newsweek.” “But the high-flying San Jose, California, company has refused to give refunds to the duped customers, Newsweek reported, suggesting that eBay (EBAY) may be unable to protect its customers from fraud. ”
• “”We feel badly for [the victims] but [they] really do need to take it up with local law enforcement,” eBay chief Meg Whitman”
• “The stock closed Friday at $192″

NEG Meg The Series 1999-2000

NEG Meg The Series 2001

NEG Meg The Series 2002

NEG Meg The Series 2003

NEG Meg The Series 2004

NEG Meg The Series 2005

NEG Meg The Series 2006

NEG Meg The Series 2007

NEG Meg The Series 2008

NEG Meg The Series 2009

Meg Whitman Steps Down from eBay’s Board
Randy Smythe, January 5 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman to run for Governor of California
Power Sellers Unite, January 6 2009

Meg Whitman resigns from all board positions
Ed, January 6 2009

• “her recent history has shown that whilst she is a capable and dynamic leader during growth of a business, she flounders during stagnation or decline.”

The Shenzhenian Candidate: Meg Whitman Wants to be Governor of California
Chris Kelly, January 6 2009

• “She’s a real person. With a genuine record. Of callous indifference not just to the dignity of labor, but to suffering in general.”

Bain Connection – Corp Raiders & Salvador
wphamilton, January 8 2009

• “In 1984, Bain Capital was financed by Ricardo Poma, Salvadoran billionaire. The founding partners were Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss. Bain Capital was a spinoff of Bain & Company, whose executives included Mitt Romney (CEO), Meg Whitman (8yrs, VP) and John Donahoe (17 yrs, Managing Director).”
• “The Bain Way, unavoidable in the business of corporate raiding, typically meant slashing jobs, closing plants, moving production overseas. The objective is bottom line return for investors regardless of jobs, local impact, environmental or other considerations, or in some cases even the long term health of the business.”
• “Bain & Company – the consulting firm parent company – saw its revenues plummet in the 80′s, the senior partners accused of looting the company for retirement featherbedding.”

Greed At A Glance
January 12 2009

• “Whitman does seem to have a problem relating to the world outside her rather privileged personal bubble. Even her philanthrophy reeks of regal.”

Don’t Bid on Meg Whitman
Mark Gimein, January 16 2009

• “The reality, however, is that the perception among CEOs that they shine in the public eye is one that comes mainly from the fact that many of them spend their time around subordinates who are eager to reflect their faint glow and pretend it’s a blinding light.”  ”Whitman is typical in this. The adoring press that Whitman got for years as head of eBay (adoring in part because eBay very efficiently shut down reporters who weren’t—for most of the time that I’d worked at Fortune, the company refused to take the magazine’s calls because of an insufficiently flattering story) contrasts starkly with the stiffness you see when you watch her at the Republican Convention—or even at eBay’s own annual eBay Live gathering.”
• “points up the biggest problem with Whitman as a candidate: After years of facing flattery and imagining that it is scrutiny, and reciting catchphrases that will seem appealing only to those who are getting paid to applaud, the average chief executive has developed the misconception that the best way to reach an audience is to say nothing.”
• “chief executives like Whitman are used to saying nothing, sounding like they’re saying nothing, and getting congratulated for it. That, more than any stiffness of style or inexperience in real public scrutiny is what keeps CEOs like Whitman out of elective office.”

eBay’s Meg Whitman to Announce Governor Run Today
Ina Steiner, February 9 2009

• Comments

It’s Official – Meg Runs for California Governor in 2010
Randy Smythe, February 9 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman to run for Governor of California
Sue Bailey, February 9 2009

• Comments

Whitman settles cybersquatter case — out of court
Shane Goldmacher, February 9 2009

• Comments

Former eBay CEO Wants to be Next California Governor
Chris Crum, February 9 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman: Small Business Governor?
Stacy Perman, February 9 2009

• Comments
• More Comments

Heavily Vaselined Ex-eBay CEO Running for California Governor
Owen Thomas, February 9 2009

• Comments

Look Out Arnold ~ Meg’s Coming!
Yahoo! Message Boards – eBay Inc. (EBAY), February 9 2009

If Meg Whitman runs California like eBay…
Dan Wilson, February 10 2009

• Comments

CA-Gov: Meg Whitman Is In
Arjun Jaikumar, February 10 2009

• “Ms. Whitman’s most recent claim to fame was presiding over a company which was part and parcel of those job losses, having laid off 10% of its workforce.”
• “Whitman may take some hits among conservatives for not even having been a Republican until 2007″
• Comments

Will Whitman’s eBay Legacy Help or Hurt Bid for Office
Kenneth Corbin, February 11 2009

• “14 percent of likely Republican voters said they backed Whitman”
• “”an argument that her opponents will make that she led the company when the expression inside the company was, ‘Even a monkey could drive this train,’”
• “The auction giant has also come under fire from some who had once been among its most loyal supporters – its sellers.”
• “A lot of the sellers would argue that eBay ultimately failed them”
• Comments

GOP gubernatorial candidate Whitman outlines stands
Michael Finnegen, February 11 2009

Meg Whitman’s Campaign – What’s Old is Not so New…
Robin Swanson, February 11 2009

• “Perhaps they’d like to sneak her into our subconscious since she’s only got a 17 percent favorability rating”

Meg Whitman Can’t Use the Buy it Now Option to Run For Governor
Tawny, February 11 2009

• “Those in the Tech World know Meg Whitman as the grim reaper behind EBay’s downfall”

Can Meg Whitman save California
Patricia Sellers, March 16 2009

• “What dirt are they going to dig up?” That’s one of many questions that Whitman’s friends are firing at her. The best “dirt” on Meg Whitman seems to be that in the past decade, she voted in elections less than half the time. There is “absolutely no excuse for it,” she has been saying in her campaign speeches, but when I ask her about her voting record, she lobs an excuse my way: “I was head down, building eBay, with two teenage sons and a neurosurgeon husband, and traveling half the time,” she says.”
• “there’s no denying that her performance as CEO sputtered in her last three years there. The company’s growth hit a wall. Profits fell. The stock, as high as $59 in late 2004, now trades around $12 a share.”
• “She did acknowledge that she left a bit of a mess at eBay”
• (Steve Poizner) ”Poizner, a Stanford-educated engineer, says, “If voters are looking to rebrand the state, she’s a very attractive candidate. But if voters are looking to rebuild the state, they’ll turn to me.”"
• “Jerry Brown, an energetic campaigner who was governor from 1975 to 1983. Brown displays a mix of ridicule and respect when he describes candidate Meg’s positioning this way: “‘I ran a business. I can buy my campaign. I have zero experience in government. I want to take on the most difficult state government job in America. Therefore, make me governor.’ That’s her campaign.”"
• “When Whitman tried to be a visionary, she sometimes scored (buying PayPal) and other times didn’t: She took a $1.4 billion write-down on Skype, acquired for $3.1 billion. “Did we pay too much? Yes,” she says, while insisting that eBay is better off owning Skype.”

Ada Lovelace Day: Meg Whitman
Dan Wilson, March 24 2009

• “Ada Lovelace Day encourages bloggers to write about women involved in technology and whilst Meg is clearly closely associated with technology, it would be hard to characterise her as a technologist. This has been both a strength and a weakness.”
• Sue [Bailey] said: ”It makes me very sad to think that someone would seek to stop someone else celebrating a person they thought worthy of celebration. That’s what ALD was all about, after all.”

Undoing Meg Whitman’s eBay
Saul Hansell, April 23 2009

• “Before voting for Meg Whitman for governor, California residents would do well to consider what has been happening at eBay since she stepped down as chief executive. John Donahoe, her successor, has pretty much disassembled all of her major strategic moves.”
• “He is undoing her acquisitions of Skype and StumbleUpon. It turns out that neither voice communications nor Web surfing have anything to do with what eBay does.”
• “Ms. Whitman’s plan to build sales of mainstream merchandise easily available elsewhere by using eBay’s structure — seven-day auctions, high merchant fees”

Meg Whitman: a female Checchi or Simon?
Garry South, May 7 2009

• “One of the major problems with wealthy business types attempting to cross over into politics is their own – how shall we say? – inflated self-impression.  Many really do envision themselves as smarter and more accomplished than officeholders who have succeeded in the political system for years or decades.  After all, they’ve run a business, created jobs, “met a payroll.””
• “Whitman’s tenure at eBay was not without controversy or failure.  For the last couple years under Whitman, the company experienced a marked slowdown in growth, and its stock lost half its value.  In 2005, she also engineered the $2.6 billion purchase of Skype, the Internet-based video calling service, believing that eBay buyers and sellers would find talking to each other directly to be peachy keen.  Instead, it turned out to be a lemon, and eBay wrote off Skype and is trying to dump it.”
• “While Whitman was CEO, the company also came under heavy fire for forgeries and stolen items, dishonest sellers and inaccurately described merchandise.  In addition, criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy.”

Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
Ina Steiner, May 7 2009

• “It will be interesting to see if California media will scrutinize what industry insiders call “eBay math” as Whitman continues to tout her record of job creation.”
• Comments

Steve Poizner for California Governor 2010 – Meg No Waay – web video
campaigntvads, May 12 2009

Mad Money Calls Out Whitman
Jim Cramer, June 10 2009

Former eBay honcho Meg Whitman brought her trophy husband
TG Daily Live, Gawker, July 10 2009

• “Former eBay honcho Meg Whitman brought her trophy husband, all the better to ask for gubernatorial campaign donations with.”

How eBay lost the China market
Sherman So, J. Christopher Westland, August 10 2009

• “Many believe Taobao beat global online auction king eBay in China by being free,  but not EachNet founder Bo Shao who sold the company to eBay in July 2003. A key catalyst was “migration”, the decision to terminate EachNet’s homegrown technology platform and move all EachNet users to the eBay US platform, said Shao.”
• “On the day of the migration, traffic to eBay China dropped by half. Despite the serious customer losses, Meg Whitman, then CEO of eBay, only learned about it a month after it occurred, on a visit to Shanghai.”
• “The company thought everything would be fine. After all, EachNet, now eBay China had an overwhelmingly dominant position and it planned to spend an extra $100 million to improve its technology platform and promote eBay’s brand in China. Any new competitors would be easy to crush.”
• “However, nothing went according to plan. A new rival came out of nowhere and eBay retreated from China four years later.“
• “What really caused eBay to lose its dominance in China was its decision to move its technology platform from China to the US”
• “The slow and unstable services frustrated users and caused them to leave eBay China in droves.”
• “After investing nearly $300 million ($180 million for acquiring Eachnet and $100 million as extra budget for its China push), eBay all but threw in the towel. It folded its China operation into a joint venture with Tom Online, a leading mobile value-added services provider in China at the end of 2006.”
• “eBay’s market share had shrunk to 7 percent by the second quarter of 2007″

Ebay still playing with the feedback
Cohibastore.com, September 19 2009

• “Meg&Co let it go for so long that they must have realized they need to monitor the entire site better and see just whats going on. Under Whitman nothing happened but fee increases and an overall degradation of the site. Like it not, JD and his cohorts are trying to fix things, rather than letting it wither on the vine like Meg was. This kind of research and testing is critical.”

Former CEO Whitman likely to take stand in eBay-Craigslist civil trial
Andrew Macintosh, September 26 2009

• “Meg Whitman may have to take time off from her Republican gubernatorial campaign next month to appear as a key witness at a Delaware civil trial featuring Web behemoths eBay and Craigslist.”
• “”The witness list has not been finalized yet, but it’s highly likely she will be testifying,” eBay spokeswoman Maggie Fitzpatrick”
• “As eBay’s former chief executive officer, Whitman allegedly oversaw its aggressive 2004 purchase of a minority 28 percent stake in Craigslist.”
• “Whitman’s involvement in eBay’s dispute with Craigslist stems from the 2004 investment. After she led the efforts to buy a minority stake, eBay launched its own overseas classified advertisement service, called Kijiji.com, in 2005.”
• “In its rival lawsuit in California and in its Delaware court documents, Craigslist alleges that eBay executives misled them from the start about their intentions.”

Steve Poizner – Meg Whitman Did Not Vote For 28 Years
campaigntvads, September 26 2009

While eBay Burned, Whitman Fiddled
Eric Jackson, October 01 2009

• “Whitman’s final years at eBay leave her open to criticism. She promoted a drunken-sailor approach to acquisitions, always overpaying and making little effort to stitch them together. A culmination was the $4.1 billion purchase of Skype in 2005″
• “more damaging in the long-run for eBay than overpaying was that Whitman didn’t get the intellectual property associated with Skype. This has allowed Skype’s founders to now come back and sue eBay for trying to unload the property recently at a valuation of $2.75 billion.”
• “Jan. 1, 2005. Since then, however, eBay has been in a tailspin with the stock down 59% vs. a Nasdaq decline of 3%”
• “Whitman’s last four years on the job in which her pay became dramatically disconnected with eBay’s stock price and her perks started to go through the roof.”
• “between 2005 and 2008, Whitman’s interest had drifted away from increasing the stock price of eBay to increasing her cash compensation and perks. Had anyone seen these clues — and, interestingly, perhaps Skoll did as he liquidated his entire eBay stake in 2006 — they might have pulled the ripcord on owning the stock in 2006 or 2007 when it was trading at $35, before the bottom fell out in the stock and it hit its nadir below $10 this past March.”
• “two years of lavish perks coincided with a time when eBay’s stock dropped 22%, even though Nasdaq was up 17%”
• “Whitman spent more than $1 million on personal air travel in 2006.”
• “They say that while Rome burned, Nero fiddled. At eBay in 2006, while the stock dropped and the Skype merger was a mess, Whitman flew to Hawaii and other locales on a private jet paid for from the shareholders’”
• “this “CEO entitlement mentality” that Whitman adopted in her final years on the job is that she’s passed the habit on to her successor. Donahoe racked up almost $280,000 worth of personal aircraft expenses in his first nine months on the job in 2008.”
• “Donahoe made $13.1 million last year for his nine months as CEO, while eBay’s stock dropped 55%, far wider than Nasdaq’s 30% loss”
• Comments

Call of Shame!
Jane Wells, October 2 2009

• “GM’s joint venture with Ebay [EBAY 22.91 0.21 (+0.93%) ]ended because it didn’t lead to sales.”
• “E-BAIL   Former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman bailed out of voting most of her life. The Sacramento Bee reports that the Republican gubernatorial candidate didn’t even register to vote until 2002, and still missed some major elections after that. Making matters worse, the Bee says Whitman earlier claimed she registered in 1998, which Whitman now says was “a mistake.” Her stumbling responses to reporters’ repeated questions only made matters worse.  Now she says, “I like many Americans was not as engaged as I should have been over the last 20 or 30 years. I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, we moved many, many times, and it is no excuse. My voting record, my registration record is unacceptable. There is no excuse for it.” Let me just say that I raised a family, I supported my husband’s career, and I’ve moved a few times, and I have never missed a major election (and I’ve only missed one minor election). Does that make me material for governor? No, but Whitman’s right, she has no excuse.”

Can Meg Whitman’s eBay success translate in Sacramento?
Ken McLaughlin and Pete Carey, October 4 2009

• “Whitman certainly has her detractors, including many sellers who, ironically, complain that eBay during her reign erected a thicket of rules that were every bit as burdensome as the government regulations she now assails. Sellers also complain that, under pressure to meet Wall Street expectations, eBay under Whitman repeatedly jacked up fees, driving off many sellers and making the site far less profitable for others.”
• “The annual eBay Live! conferences — once an almost-evangelical gathering of buyers and sellers — became “bitch fests,” said Andrew Bergman, operations manager of Alpha & Omega Antiques, which does about $120,000 worth of business on eBay each year. “eBay just got too big for its britches,” he said.”
• “Other Whitman critics say she was simply lucky, having hopped on a bandwagon that was rolling down a road paved in gold.”
• “eBay could have been run by a Labrador retriever,” said Rosalinda Baldwin of the Auction Guild, a 10-year-old watchdog group that monitors complaints at online auction businesses.”
• “After being singled out in a congressional report that called the IPO system rigged and corrupt, Whitman issued an internal memo to eBay employees saying she got the shares because she was a personal client of Goldman Sachs.”
• “two professors who focus on business ethics — David Shapiro at the City University of New York and William Black at the University of Missouri-Kansas City — predict the issue might prove troublesome for her on the campaign trail.”  ”The fact that she could say she could learn no ethical lesson is illustrative of moral blindness,” Black said.”
• “What’s not in dispute is that as the traditional online business began slipping in 2005, Whitman began acquiring companies to boost growth. While PayPal — which currently contributes almost a third of eBay’s revenue — was a grand slam, other acquisitions didn’t work out so well. Clearly the worst decision was buying Skype for $3.1 billion, on the questionable theory that eBay buyers and sellers would flock to the service to talk to each other to close their deals. Whitman eventually admitted she paid too much for Skype, and the company took a $1.4 billion write-down.”

I Stand By My Prediction
ebay_flyer, October 5 2009

• “I didn’t realize that was the deal when I shook Megs hand at Ebay Live 1.
• I’m a legend in the halls of Ebay!
• Ebay Pays My Bills ~ LOL“

The arrogance may be Whitman’s
George Skelton, October 5 2009

• “The political novice who would be governor calls state workers ‘selfish and arrogant.’ That isn’t a sound management practice.”
• “a bit grating recently to read that billionaire political novice Meg Whitman had called state civil servants “selfish and arrogant” in officially announcing her candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.”
• “Whitman felt she had more important things to do than participate in democracy’s most basic civic duty. She couldn’t be bothered. Had little interest in public policy.”  ”Now she wants to be governor. Is that arrogant?”

Who junked eBay’s lawn chairs?
VenturaCountyStar.com, October 5 2009

• “one of Whitman’s first acts after being hired in February 1998 was that she “replaced the lawn chairs with corporate cubicles.”"
• “Steve Westly, also an early eBay executive, I had paraphrased what Westly told me about one of his first acts when he was hired in 1997 as vice president of business development: “to order the office lawn chairs replaced with traditional furniture.”"
• “Adam Cohen’s book “The Perfect Store.” Cohen puts the year of the lawn chairs’ demise at 1997, but credits neither Westly nor Whitman.”

eMeg Stumbles
Jerry Roberts, October 8 2009

• “Steve Poizner, the state’s insurance commissioner, who posted a detailed narrative (tinyurl.com/y85tawr) of her shifting statements, along with a batch of YouTube videos using her own words to question her integrity.”  “Meg Whitman’s different stories on her non-voting record have raised serious concerns as to what is true and what is deception,” said Poizner spokesperson Jarrod Agen.”
• “eBay billionaire’s laissez faire attitude about the most basic duty of citizenship could feed the perception that eMeg has a sense of entitlement, not to mention disdain for the democratic process.”
• [Meg Whitman] ““Go find it””

NEG Meg The Series 2010

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The “NEG MEG” phrase was popularized by ‘Ming the Merciless’, an AuctionBytes poster.

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