Why?
At the moment they are doing a very good job, or at least batting above their average - a reducing GMV but increased profits, and a better than expected last quarter 2023 share dividend for shareholders! So the evidence is that eBay, the company, is doing ok!
In general, the shareholders invest capital to create a steady, profitable business, and they appoint a board of directors, and dictate the salaries and bonuses of those directors, who are there to ensure that the shareholders have a decent return on investment, which is shareholder dividends and, ideally, a healthy and increasing share price. Nothing more and nothing less.
So it would be rather difficult to remove the board of directors, even harder when so many are also shareholders - the major individual shareholders at eBay - most shares are owned by three institutions - are all either the board directors or executives, including the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, the board director who has the most shares of an individual shareholder! If you did ask any directors what they would change, it would certainly be something that would benefit them, because we all see things better from our own perspectives
They seem to be doing a fairly good job, so would you - as an shareholder and investor in eBay and therefore, theoretically, in a position to sack the board directors - get rid of them? If so, how would you persuade the other shareholders to support you?
If I was a shareholder, I might be interested to know what steps the Board of Directors are taking to retain buyers and retain and expand the big business seller base, and what steps they are taking to use their investments to at least maintain and hopefully improve the share dividend. And I'd probably be more concerned about untapped markets in outside of USA and mainland Europe than existing markets. Especially when China, India, Indonesia and Japan are some the countries with good economic growth, USA is doing ok and Germany, France and the UK are struggling.
The business sellers in the UK are happily paying bigtime just to play, which is directly helping that GMV/profit ratio that pleases the shareholders and thus protects the directors' jobs - any backtracking to make the little guy feel better will only result in more sellers selling to the same pot of buyers, thus making competition more intense and life more difficult, not easier, for those sellers - and might make life a bit more difficult for some of the big guys - never a good thing.
Of course they can do thing differently - personally I might wish for the same fee levels for all, no fees on postage, a huge amount of money spent on advertising the vintage and used section, listing made easier, and huge cash awards to the most prolific buyers on ebay - but if wishes were horse beggars would ride!
Mercari - still a player in the US and Japan - have just announced the end of seller fees, I wonder if a discussion about this is on the the agenda for the next board meeting- I suspect not.
