Does EBay Need A New Boss?

Rachel Rosmarin, 04.09.07, 6:00 AM ET

Is eBay chief executive Meg Whitman ready for a new job?

The billionaire has been running the online market giant for nine years, which means she's approaching a one decade deadline she has set for herself in the past. After running the company for that long, she has said, "you need a new set of eyeballs."

If Whitman does leave, she'll have plenty of other options in the corporate world. Or she could recast her career in politics, where she is already putting in plenty of time working for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

As a national finance co-chair for Romneys 2008 campaign, Whitman has taken time to cold call prospective contributors, host a $2,300- a-head fundraiser for him at the Burlingame Hyatt Regency on March 14 and hammer out details of a Salesforce.com (nyse: CRM - news - people ) application called Com-Mitt to help the campaign manage fundraising. She's been doing a bang-up job, helping Romney $23 million in the first quarter of 2007--more than any other Republican.

Romney and Whitman were colleagues at Bain Consulting in the 1980s. Could her campaign work turn into a full-time job sometime soon? No, insists an eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) spokesperson--she's simply supporting a longtime friend as a private citizen. "As she has stated in the past, [Whitman] has no plans to leave eBay," the spokesperson said in a prepared statement. "She actually plans on staying at eBay for the long term."

This isn't the first time Whitman's name has been linked to non-eBay jobs. In 2005, she was a popular candidate to replace Michael Eisner as head of the Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), a job that eventually went to Bob Iger. At that time it was unclear who would replace Whitman if she left. Now the consensus is that the job would go to John Donahoe, another Bain alumnus who runs eBay's marketplace unit.

"The timing of an exit now would be best because there wouldn't be a lot of chaos," says Scot Wingo, chief executive of e-commerce software and consulting company Channel Advisor and author of the blog eBay Strategies. "When John Donahoe came in, it was pretty clear he was a hand-picked successor."

But while Whitman's done an admirable job sustaining the company during her tenure, eBay's board may want to think twice about promoting from within when she leaves. EBay's revenues and user numbers are no longer ballooning at the rate they once did, and Wall Street has noticed. Though the stock has climbed from a summer low, it's still down 16% from a year-ago high of $40 per share.

Concerns about competition from nimble, tech-savvy Web giants like Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and pricey acquisitions that havent yet reaped returns, like Skype, make eBay seem ripe for change that hasn't come from current management.

"EBay's been a slowing growth story for some time," says Jeetil Patel, an analyst with Deutsche Bank. "The company hasnt really changed with the times, and it comes down to [Whitman's] playbook--it's getting old and dusty."

-- Edited by budnonymous at 15:02, 2007-04-09