Carl Icahn has taken a stake in Ebay Inc and is proposing a spin-off of the company's fast-growing PayPal division, but the e-commerce giant rebuffed the overture, setting the stage for a potential battle with the activist investor.EBay, which bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002 and has considered hiving off the multibillion-dollar payments service, argued on Wednesday that the business would lose synergies with the overall e-commerce business as an independent unit.Some analysts, however, said that operating as a separate entity would encourage other online retailers to adopt the service and help retain key executives, with a spinoff that could unlock the value of a service that grew 19 percent during the holiday quarter.Shares of Ebay, which also reported earnings per share a penny above Wall Street expectations, jumped as much as 12 percent. The stock was up 7 percent at $54.41 after hours.
eBay Inc. is a global technology company. The Company enables commerce through three reportable segments: Marketplaces, Payments, and GSI. Shares of EBAY traded higher by 0.48% or $0.26/share to $54.41. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $48.06 and as high as $58.04. On average, 12899000 shares of EBAY exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 35924948.
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