EBay says head of its enterprise business resigns

Alistair Barr, USA TODAY 7:41 p.m. EST January 15, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO - EBay said Wednesday that the head of the e-commerce company's enterprise business is leaving after lackluster growth in 2013.

Chris Saridakis, president of eBay Enterprise, resigned for personal reasons, the company said in a statement. An external search will be conducted for a successor. In the meantime, Tobias Hartmann, vice president, Omnichannel Operations and International, will serve as interim head of eBay Enterprise, it added.

EBay also lost another executive this week. Hugh Williams, who oversaw development of the company's new search engine, called Cassini, left to become head of R&D at software development company Pivotal.

Saridakis had run eBay Enterprise since June 2011, following the company's acquisition of GSI Commerce, which he helped oversee. GSI was renamed eBay Enterprise in 2013. The acquisition was part of a broader push by eBay to get larger merchants selling on its site, rather than the smaller, individual sellers that the company has traditionally worked with.

"EBay has been trying to generate growth from this business, but results so far have been a little bit behind what eBay laid out on analyst day last year," Ron Josey, an analyst at JMP Securities, said.

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